BTC Racing’s Josh Cook is hoping to further reduce the points deficit to standings leader Colin Turkington after outscoring his title rivals in the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Silverstone.
Cook qualified ninth for race one, but made quick progress in the opening laps to eventually come home fourth, outscoring Turkington, Andrew Jordan and Dan Cammish in the process.
The result means he now sits just 19 points adrift of Turkington with five races remaining, cutting the deficit by 11 points in the first encounter.
He told TouringCars.Net he is aiming to continue reducing the gap, and feels confident for race two due to the “continuity” of running the same weight and tyre compound as race one.
“We needed that solid points score in race one, we’re going to need another in race two,” said Cook.
“Hopefully we can eat into the deficit in the points a little bit more. We’re on the same tyre and same weight as we were for race one, which gives us a bit of continuity for setup which is nice.
“A good start to the day, we’ve closed the gap a bit but we need another chunk.”
The five-time BTCC racewinner believes his FK8 Honda Civic is “strong in all the right areas” around the 1.63-mile Silverstone National layout, but believes weather could play a part in the remaining two contests.
“I just got a good opening lap in that one and got my head down,” said Cook.
“We’ve always got a good race car on a Sunday, Saturday always seems to be the achilles heel.
“We had an acceptable Saturday, we were pretty happy with P9. We’ve shown decent pace in race trim, the car is strong in all the right areas.
“I’m going to keep pushing and see what we can do. We’ll see what happens with the weather too.”
Cook continued: “At the start of the season we were good on a Saturday, but with success ballast we’re still working on getting the best out of the tyre on one lap with a good quali setup.
“That’s been our achilles heel. On the first two sets yesterday it wasn’t looking great but on the third set we pulled a good lap out.
“We seem to have found a sweet spot and that bodes well for Brands [Hatch].”
The second British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Silverstone is scheduled to get underway at 14:35 BST.