Gordon Shedden has made it two wins out of two at Croft by heading home team-mate Matt Neal in a thrilling second race of the day. Jason Plato completed the poidum to ensure that he remains on the tail of Neal in the championship.
Click here for full Round 14 results.
From pole position, Shedden made a clean start to lead, whilst behind him Rob Collard lost out to Jason Plato at the second corner. Collard had attempted to go around the outside of Shedden at the start but this left him vulnerable to Plato and he dropped to third. Any potential challenge from Collard was scuppered on the following lap when he was tapped into a spin and onto the grass as Matt Neal attempted to pass Paul O’Neill at Tower. The two Honda drivers made contact and Collard became the unfortunate victim.
After passing O’Neill, Neal quickly closed up to Plato and on lap 8 made a brilliant pass on the Chevrolet driver into Sunny In, cleanly passing the 2001 champion. From there on Neal was able to catch the heavier car of Shedden and followed his team-mate home for a 1-2 finish for Honda, briefly taking the lead to gain a bonus point for leading the race.
After a race-long battle, O’Neill eventually managed to pass Tom Onslow-Cole for fourth position. The duo had been scrapping for the majority of the final few laps, with Onslow-Cole driving extremely defensively. With his turbo-charged LPG engine, Onslow-Cole proved difficult to pass until on the final corner of the final lap O’Neill made a late move and made contact with Onslow-Cole, who was clearly unhappy about the move and his resulting fifth position.
Tom Boardman took sixth at the finish, after having started from 12th, with the four cars behind him all within two seconds. Andrew Jordan was seventh, a recovering Rob Collard was eighth, Alex MacDowall was ninth in his battered Chevrolet Cruze after clouting several tyre barriers and Andy Neate was tenth.
Tom Chilton struggled to improve much on his race one result, finishing in 11th as a result of starting 18th and struggling to make up places at a scorching hot Croft. Martin Depper again impressed for Forster Motorsport to finish in a career-best 12th.
The two Triple Eight cars of James Nash and Daniel Lloyd were down in 13th and 14th after the pair made contact and ran wide at the hairpin on lap 7. As Lloyd attempted to pass Nash he instead ran wide and dropped both drivers several positions, from which they were unable to recover.
Paul O’Neill was the driver who took the fastest lap.
David Pinkney’s team were unable to fit a new engine in time for the race so he failed to take to the starting grid. The bad luck continued for Motorbase Performance as Mat Jackson retired on lap 5 with damaged suspension. Steven Kane also failed to finish as a result of radiator damage to his BMW on a particularly hot day in North Yorkshire.