Josh Cook believes that he could have won the second British Touring Car Championship race at Snetterton if he hadn’t given back second to Dan Cammish under the safety car, with the Power Maxed driver later regaining the position.
Cook started in fourth and spent the early part of the race just outside the podium positions, until passing Chris Smiley for third on lap six.
The Vauxhall driver then took second briefly just before the safety car came out at the end of lap ten, but he gave the position back to Honda’s Cammish as he was not certain if he had completed the pass before the marshals displayed the safety car notices.
“As I passed Dan there was a marshal’s post on the right-hand side which I couldn’t see,” explained Cook to TouringCars.Net. “I couldn’t tell if there was a yellow flag, and there was one at the next post, so just to play it safe I swapped back.
“I said on the radio that I wasn’t sure if there was a yellow flag, and they said ‘OK, give it back’ and we played it safe, which was exactly the right thing to do.”
When asked if he thought he could have won the race if he hadn’t given the place back to Cammish, having put heavy pressure on Sutton on the last lap when he eventually got back into second, Cook was adamant he could have got past the Subaru racer.
“It would have given me the extra lap I needed, but I could also be stood here with a win but getting disqualified for overtaking under yellows. We’re here for the long game. A P1 and a potential big penalty, or a solid P2 and move on to the next race.
“I’m here for the championship and I’m here for the long game, so we’ll take the points.”
Cook says his approach is therefore not to take undue risks, as he knows the title is won through consistency and race finishes.
“I’ve had two race weekends where I broke down at Croft and got caught up in somebody else’s accident at Oulton, so we just need to try and bag as many points as possible and move back up the leaderboard.
“We’ll see what the weather is like in race three, but we just need to make sure we finish as high up as possible and bag as many of those double points as possible.
“You’ve got just as much to gain and just as much to lose. Touring cars isn’t necessarily won on the good weekends, it’s won on the bad ones.”