Callum Newsham wins wet and red flagged first Croft race
Callum Newsham won the first TCR UK race of the weekend at Croft, a very wet race which was red-flagged and restarted due to an incident involving Russell Joyce.
JH Racing driver Newsham (Hyundai) started from pole and headed the field as the lights went out, but only for a couple of corners as Lynk & Co driver Lewis Kent managed to make his way past on the very wet track.
Disaster struck Brad Hutchison and Max Hall who both suffered driveshaft issues and were forced to pit from second and fourth position on the grid respectively.
Newsham had the pace on Kent and snatched the lead at the start of lap three on the main straight.
Audi driver Joyce outbraked himself at the Complex on the same lap and went straight into the barriers, bringing the safety car out initially and later the red flags.
The red flags meant that both Hutchison and Hall were able to rejoin the race, albeit six laps behind the leaders.
The race restarted with six minutes left and points leader Jenson O’Neill-Going made a mistake coming out of the chicane on the restart lap which allowed Cupra driver Rod McGovern to snatch fifth place.
Another incident came on lap ten at the chicane as Alastair Kellett lost control over his Audi and spun off by the barriers, leaving his Audi and a permanent yellow flag there for the remaining three laps of the race.
Newsham won the race by close to 1.5 seconds over Kent while Max Hart was close behind in third place for DT Racing Developments Honda.
Carl Boardley drove a quiet race to finish fourth from seventh on the grid.
McGovern finished fifth ahead of O’Neill-Going and Harry Bloor, while Cupra driver Mark Smith rounded off the top eight as the final driver on the same lap as the leaders.
Post race, the result was amended to only reflect the laps carried out after the red flag, which meant that Hutchison was promoted up into eighth ahead of Smith, whilst Hall was classified as a finisher a lap down.
Hall will now start race two from pole as a result.
The second race starts at 15:25 local time/16:25 CEST.
