BTC Racing’s Tom Chilton was pleased to bring home his third podium of the 2020 British Touring Car Championship campaign after momentarily losing power in the final race at Croft.
The Honda racer started the reversed-grid encounter from pole position, and initially got a superb getaway to lead the way into Clervaux for the first time as Tom Ingram’s Toyota and Dan Cammish’s Honda battled for second behind him.
With Ingram completing the move, a mistake from Chilton on the entry to Tower Bend then allowed the Toyota driver to pull off a bold manoeuvre through the high-speed Jim Clark Esses, demoting Chilton down to second and enabling Cammish to capitalise and apply the pressure to Chilton’s Honda.
“I got an epic start, and it felt like a hundred metres ahead of Ingram and Cammish for turn one,” said Chilton. “Then I went through the chicane and had a little bit of oversteer.
“I thought it’d be alright under brakes, I didn’t brake ridiculously hard but you may have seen on the TV I had a massive sliding moment under brakes which was enough for Tom to get through, he drove really well.”
During his battle for second position with Cammish, Chilton explained that he briefly lost power as the dashboard cut out in his FK8 Honda Civic, allowing Cammish to close the gap before ultimately making the move and leaving Chilton to settle for third.
“I had a good old scrap with Dan, there was a bit through the race through the complex where my whole dashboard died, my battery died, my power died, and I thought I was going to have to pull over,” he said.
“I think Dan gave me a tap from behind and the whole system rebooted itself again, and I cracked on! But it gave Dan a chance to get close and he went for a lunch at Tower and it was a little bit of a push to get past but in all fairness I was struggling there under brakes.
“So we’ll see what happens with the stewards on that one but I think it was a reasonably fair move if I’m honest.”