Josh Cook kicks off Oulton Park weekend on top

Josh Cook made the ideal start to the fourth weekend of the BTCC season at Oulton Park by topping the times at the wheel of his BTC Racing Honda.

The championship leader posted a best time that was almost a quarter of a second clear of the chasing pack, which would be an impressive figure considering that you had to go down to the bottom half of the top 20 to find two more cars split by more than a tenth of a second.

Cook’s time came little more than 15 minutes into the 40 minute long session and would be the only sub 1:26s lap set across the field, leaving him clear of the Hyundai of Tom Ingram.

Ingram also set his quickest time on his first timed run in the session with Adam Morgan slotting into third spot in his BMW as the best of the rear-wheel drive runners.

Gordon Shedden’s Honda was fourth quickest ahead of the Ford Focus of Ash Sutton, with Ricky Collard producing his most competitive session of the season to date as he ended up with the sixth best time in the Speedworks Toyota – setting his fastest time late on to edge ahead of Dan Cammish.

Cammish was the last driver within half a second of the benchmark time.

Further down the order, the BMWs of Jake Hill and Colin Turkington were down in twelfth and 15th positions on the time sheets, with the promise of more to come later in the day.

The leading 19 drivers in the session were within a second of Cook’s best.