As Autosport reports, Mikey Doble inherited a brilliant victory in the first British Touring Car Championship race at Silverstone after his team-mate Aiden Moffat was handed a five-second track-limits penalty. The Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon pair completely dominated the front of the field, but it was Doble who ultimately kept his winning momentum rolling from the Croft finale.
Moffat had launched off the line much better than poleman Doble, briefly losing out to Daryl De Leon's West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport before reclaiming the spot at Brooklands. The intra-team battle ebbed and flowed through strategic use of TOCA Turbo Boost, with both drivers holding the maximum 14 laps. With four laps to go, the penalty news dropped for exceeding track-limits grace. Moffat crossed the line first with the PMR Audis separated by less than 0.1 seconds, but the win went to Doble.
"We need to try and get our head around these starts," Doble explained. "It was raining onతల the warm-up laps, so my tyres were a bit colder than those behind me. It was a bit of a game of chess with my team-mate with the boost, and I feel a little bit sorry for Aiden. I was conserving my boost for the last lap, because it would have been a grandstand finish. I didn’t want to slow him down by battling and drop him down the field."
Behind them, Tom Chilton steered his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback past De Leon on lap two at Brooklands to secure second in the final classification. Chilton fought off pressure from the WSR BMWs, including a stunning drive from Charles Rainford as the highest-placed runner on medium-compound Goodyear tyres against a soft-tyre majority. Neither BMW could stop Josh Cook, however. The Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport driver muscled past Rainford at Becketts on lap 15 and squeezed by De Leon at Woodcote with a lap left, turning his fourth-place finish on the road into third once Moffat's penalty was applied. Moffat was classified fourth, De Leon fifth, and Gordon Shedden sixth in the Laser Tools-liveried Speedworks Toyota after also passing Rainford.
Adam Morgan took a lonely eighth in his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon, while team-mate Dan Rowbottom lost ninth to the Speedworks Toyota of Aron Taylor-Smith, with all three running medium tyres. Championship contenders lacked TTB entirely, with Sutton and Cammish on mediums and Ingram on softs.
Ash Sutton was left waiting to clinch a record-breaking fifth BTCC title after falling just one point short. Cammish was running 11th in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium before pitting and losing two laps, leaving Sutton on course for the crown. Sutton and reigning champion Ingram had climbed to ninth and 10th on lap one, but a three-wide moment at Brooklands resulted in contact that spun Ingram's Excelr8 Hyundai. While Ingram recovered, Sutton needed 11th to seal it, only for Chris Smiley to snatch that position away on the final lap in his Restart Racing Hyundai. Sutton and Ingram crossed 12th and 13th, officially eliminating the two-time champion Ingram from the title hunt. Meanwhile, Dexter Patterson fought through the early scrap to finish further back, securing the Jack Sears Trophy title for the PMR Audi squad.
