Ford gets BTCC win

Tom Chilton, driving his Team Aon Ford Focus ST, won the first race of a rain-lashed British Touring Car Championship round at Brands Hatch this weekend.


Amazingly, the last time a Ford was victorious in a BTCC race was ten years ago. That was during the 2000 season, which saw the top three championship positions ultimately taken by Alain Menu, Anthony Reid and Rickard Rydell in their Ford Mondeos. But the lean spell since wasn’t because the cars were uncompetitive, they just didn’t compete: between 2001 and 2008, there weren’t any Ford entries at all on the BTCC grid.

Chilton should have made it two wins in succession but, despite being first across the line in the second race as well, he was later disqualified due to a ride height infringement. His demotion handed the win to team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole.

It will be interesting to see if the pace of the LPG-powered Focus is a sign of things to come, or whether the car was simply suited to the circuit and conditions. The other teams might start talking about some kind of performance equalisation if the successes continue.

All three races were affected by the weather, with the safety car making regular outings to enable the marshals to shift stranded cars to safety. The Kent circuit started to gradually dry out as the afternoon went on though, so that by the time of the third race teams were left deciding whether to go for wet tyres, slicks or a mixture of both.

Mat Jackson elected to stick to wets all round on his Airwaves BMW 320si, a gamble that paid off. He managed to fend off Matt Neal, finishing just under half a second ahead of the Honda Civic to secure his first victory of the season.

Neal’s main championship rival, Jason Plato, had a day he’ll probably want to forget. He only managed to finish eighth in the first race, just behind his Silverline Chevrolet team mate Alex MacDowell. Then, in both of the next two races, he was forced to retire with technical problems.

All of which eroded the championship lead Plato had coming to Brands Hatch - he is now equal first on points with archrival Neal, but assumes second place because of his fewer race wins:

Pos.  Driver / Points
01     Matt Neal / 67
02     Jason Plato / 67
03     Steven Kane / 59
04     Paul O'Neill / 56
05     Mat Jackson / 53
06     Gordon Shedden / 50
07     Tom Onslow-Cole / 42
08     Robert Collard / 39
09     Fabrizio Giovanardi / 38
10     Tom Chilton / 32
11     Andrew Jordan / 30
12     Tom Boardman / 26
13     Alex MacDowell / 25
14     Philip Glew / 9
15     James Nash / 9
16     David Pinckney / 8
17     Andy Neate / 3
18     John George / 2
19     Martin Johnson / 2
20     Matt Hamilton / 2
21     Martin Depper / 0
22     Arthur Forster / 0
23     Lea Wood / 0
24     Shaun Hollamby / 0

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