Matt Neal took his second win of the day in the British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton with an imperious lights-to-flag victory.
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Neal was rarely challenged at the head of the field, and the victory moves him into the joint lead of the championship with Jason Plato on 120 points.
After a clean getaway for the front-runners, the first incident of note came when Árón Smith spun on the exit of Church on the first lap, whilst Frank Wrathall had to pit to have his radiator cleared.
The safety car was deployed on the fourth lap, following a shunt for Dan Welch’s Proton. Welch appeared to loose the rear of the car well before the chicane, and speared backwards into the barriers.
Once the racing resumed on lap nine, Plato was initally able to challenge Neal for the lead, but he quickly fell back into the clutches of Tom Onslow-Cole, who had retained his third place off the start. After resisting strong pressure from both Onslow-Cole and Andrew Jordan, Plato made a slight mistake on the exit of Village and Onslow-Cole finally made his move.
A lap later Jordan was able to pass Plato across the start finish line and Gordon Shedden followed him through, the pair both recovering from less than ideal grid slots. They then set out to catch and pass Onslow-Cole, but the Passat driver kept his head to hold onto second place, whilst a slide from Jordan on the final lap allowed Shedden to steal in and claim the third place on the podium.
Behind them, Plato was just able to hold off Jeff Smith for fifth, whilst Sam Tordoff had another lonely run to seventh place. Adam Morgan was the next car across the line, ahead of the impressive Jack Goff, who raced hard to pass the BMW’s of Colin Turkington and Rob Collard.
They were both also beaten by the Focus of Aron Smith as he recovered through the field, but teammate Mat Jackson was limited to 15th, after a slide of his own cost him a second-consecutive top-ten finish.
Lea Wood ran out a comfortable winner of the S2000 cars after his main competitor Liam Griffin was forced to retire from the race.