Gordon Shedden has taken victory in the second British Touring Car Championship race at Donington Park, beating team-mate Matt Neal as points leader Jason Plato crashed out.
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Shedden’s first victory of the season came after he started from the front row of the grid alongside race one winner Mat Jackson. After following Jackson for the first four laps, Shedden made his move on lap five to take a lead he would not lose. Team-mate Neal got past on lap 8 and followed Shedden home for the team’s first 1-2 finish since the final meeting last year. It was Honda’s 99th win in the BTCC.
Third went the way of Mat Jackson in the Redstone Racing Ford Focus, moving him up to fourth in the championship.
At the start, Jackson made the best start from Pole Position while Jason Plato in the MG was flying up the order and nudged Shedden. Worse was to come for Plato at the end of the lap. Defending from Collard, Plato forced the eBay Motors driver wide and got spun into the barriers on the outside of Goddards chicane. Collard himself spun accross the circuit and was lucky not to get collected. Whilst Collard recovered, Plato went into the pits for damage checks.
The Safety car was deployed and wiped out the 2.3s advantage which Jackson had opened up over Shedden. Once the Safety Car was withdrawn, Jackson pulled off the perfect restart to open up an advantage of seven tenths over Shedden.
Lap five saw the lead of the race change as the flying Scotsman moved up the inside of Jackson at the Goddards chicane, while further back Daniel Welch spun at the chicane in his Proton Persona.
Shedden in the lighter car started to pull away from Jackson and Neal was soon on his tail and on the eighth lap, Neal made it a Honda one-two as he out-dragged Jackson coming out of Coppice onto the back straight.
Jackson soon had to defend from Newsham, who had moved into fourth with an aggressive move on Jordan at McLeans, forcing the Pirtek driver into a slide.
With Shedden pulling away from Neal, Jackson and Newsham were closing in and looked to make it a three way battle for second, but the following lap the reigning Champion started to pull away and left Jackson and Newsham to fight over the final podium position.
Newsham was unable to close enough to the Redstone Racing Ford Focus to make a move for P3 and on the final lap; he lost out on the opportunity to make a move as they lapped Tony Hughes in the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis.
At the flag, Shedden secured his first win of the season from Neal and Jackson, while the top ten was completed by Newsham, Jordan, Jeff Smith in the second Pirtek Racing Honda Civic, Tony Gilham, Rob Collard, who recovered from his lap one spin, Aron Smith and Collard’s eBay Motors team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole.
The draw for the final race of the day grid was drawn by Everton goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann and he drew number six, which puts Jeff Smith on pole for round six of the season. Smith will have team-mate Jordan alongside him for the start of the race.
With Plato failing to score, Neal has moved into the lead of the Championship with Jordan now joint second with Plato and Jackson fourth.
Round six gets underway at 17.10.