Dan Rowbottom overcomes Gordon Shedden to take first BTCC victory

Dan Rowbottom has taken his first ever race victory in the British Touring Car Championship this afternoon, following a close battle with team-mate Gordon Shedden at Oulton Park.

However, today’s proceedings began under sombre terms. Yesterday evening, we received the dreadful news that a marshal had tragically passed away after a freak crash at Brands Hatch.

Marshals are the lifeblood of motorsport, and without this tightly-knit community of volunteers, we simply couldn’t go racing. As such, a minute’s silence was observed at Oulton Park in order to pay respects to those affected by yesterday’s tragedy.

Nevertheless, the BTCC schedule will continue as planned today, as it is hoped that that is what the marshalling community would want.

From pole position, Senna Proctor bogged down, thus blocking the path of Rory Butcher directly behind him and handing the lead over to Shedden. However, the returning triple champion wouldn’t have an easy start either, with Team Dynamics team-mate Rowbottom bearing down on him.

Then at Cascades, championship heavyweights Colin Turkington and Ash Sutton took to the grass thanks to a lack of grip and slight contact from the cars on the inside line. Sam Smelt followed them off too.

Heading onto lap two, a battle was breaking out for third place. On the soft tyres, Adam Morgan managed to get the better of Butcher at turn one. The Scot in the Toyota then tried to win the place back at Lodge corner, though Morgan’s BMW had enough grunt to fend him off through Deer Leap.

A little further back, Aiden Moffat had been busy in the early stages of this race. Having started outside of the top ten, Moffat had fought his way up to sixth place by the end of lap three. His championship-leading team-mate Sutton wasn’t having the best of times though, after having to return to pitlane following his trip across the grass.

Onto lap seven, Proctor had closed in on Butcher for fourth place. Looking to recover after his woeful start, the BTC Racing driver saw a gap on the inside line at turn four and managed to shoulder barge his way past the Corolla.

But then, the race came to a halt when Jason Plato made a late attempt to overtake Tom Oliphant at Lodge Corner. The rear-wheel drive BMW promptly spun as a result of the front-to-rear contact, and was heavily collected by an unsighted Chris Smiley.

Rick Parfitt Jr. then came round the corner and failed to avoid Oliphant’s stricken car, hitting it directly on the side of the driver’s door. As a result, the red flags came out, and the race was suspended. Thankfully, Oliphant managed to get out of the car under his own steam, and was reported over live commentary to be unscathed by the impact.

After a relatively lengthy delay to recover the three cars, the race was eventually restarted for a six-lap sprint to the finish. Once again, Shedden made a slow start from the front row of the grid, and this time Rowbottom managed to capitalise to take the lead on the run into turn one.

From the back of the grid, Tom Ingram had made superb progress in the first half of the race to get into the top fifteen, but at the restart, the second-place man in the championship was in the thick of it in the midfield and dropped back outside of the points. To make matters worse, Sutton had charged up the order immediately and managed to overhaul his nearest title rival for sixteenth.

At the front, the Team Dynamics squad would be grimacing in their pit garage, as Shedden twice looked to the inside of Rowbottom for the lead at Old Hall Corner, and at Lodge, where the team’s two cars fatefully collided back in 2011.

Meanwhile, Proctor had fallen back to ninth, meaning that it was now Stephen Jelley who was latched onto the back of Butcher in the battle for fourth. Plato was also a man on a charge, progressing up to seventh from outside the top ten after the red flag period.

Crucially, Sutton then managed to pass Aron Taylor-Smith for fifteenth and a championship point at turn four, before then doing the same against Dan Lloyd to move up to fourteenth.

At the front though, Rowbottom held on to take his first ever race victory in the British Touring Car Championship, managing to fend off Shedden who would secure a 1-2 for Team Dynamics. Morgan rounded out the podium for Cicely Motorsport.

Jelley wasn’t quite able to breach Butcher’s defence of fourth place, while Moffat scored a good result in sixth.

Plato would indeed walk away with seventh from this one, though his earlier involvement in Oliphant’s demise may garner attention from the stewards.

Jake Hill, Proctor and Jack Goff completed the top ten – with the latter two drivers possibly feeling disappointed after starting the race amongst the top five.

Carl Boardley brought his Infiniti home in eleventh, just ahead of Ollie Jackson in twelfth and Plato’s team-mate Lloyd. In fact, Lloyd had managed to reclaim the position from Sutton in a drag race to the finish line, after the championship leader compromised his own pace by trying to pass Jackson.

Josh Cook claimed the final championship point in fifteenth, meaning that it would be a pointless affair for Ingram and Turkington in eighteenth and nineteenth place respectively.

Race Two gets underway later this afternoon at 14:45 BST.

Race results

POS	NO	CL	NAT	DRIVER	ENTRANT	CAR	LAPS	TIME	GAP	GD
1	32	I		Daniel ROWBOTTOM	Halfords Racing with Cataclean	Honda Civic Type-R	6	8:48.702	1:26.734	4
2	52	I		Gordon SHEDDEN	Halfords Racing with Cataclean	Honda Civic Type-R	6	0.384	1:26.803	2
3	33	I		Adam MORGAN	Car Gods with Ciceley Motorsport	BMW 330i M Sport	6	2.104	1:27.047	6
4	6	M		Rory BUTCHER	Toyota Gazoo Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	6	5.885	1:27.658	3
5	12	M		Stephen JELLEY	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	6	6.170	1:27.073	8
6	16	I		Aiden MOFFAT	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	6	7.053	1:27.252	12
7	11	I		Jason PLATO	Adrian Flux with Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	6	7.469	1:27.474	18
8	24	M		Jake HILL	MB Motorsport accelerated by Blue Square	Ford Focus ST	6	7.829	1:27.420	7
9	18	I		Senna PROCTOR	BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	6	8.082	1:27.123	1
10	31	I		Jack GOFF	Team HARD. with Autobrite Direct	CUPRA Leon	6	8.444	1:27.239	5
11	41	I		Carl BOARDLEY	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	6	9.405	1:27.378	19
12	48	M		Ollie JACKSON	MB Motorsport accelerated by Blue Square	Ford Focus ST	6	10.629	1:27.543	17
13	123	I		Daniel LLOYD	Adrian Flux with Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	6	10.897	1:27.499	16
14	1	I		Ash SUTTON	Laser Tools Racing	Infiniti Q50	6	10.955	1:26.823	10
15	66	I		Josh COOK	BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	6	11.690	1:27.616	13
16	40	I		Árón TAYLOR-SMITH	Team HARD. with HUB Financial Solutions	CUPRA Leon	6	14.195	1:28.134	21
17	3	I		Tom CHILTON	Car Gods with Ciceley Motorsport	BMW 330i M Sport	6	14.373	1:27.672	22
18	2	M		Colin TURKINGTON	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	6	14.593	1:27.462	9
19	80	I		Tom INGRAM	Ginsters EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	6	15.331	1:27.775	28
20	96	I		Jack BUTEL	EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	6	15.580	1:27.956	27
21	99	I		Jade EDWARDS	PHSC with BTC Racing	Honda Civic Type-R	6	16.384	1:28.022	23
22	19	I		Jack MITCHELL	Team HARD. with Autobrite Direct	CUPRA Leon	6	17.203	1:28.254	25
23	23	M		Sam SMELT	Toyota Gazoo Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	6	17.530	1:28.333	15
NC	4	M		Sam OSBORNE	Racing with Wera & Photon Group	Ford Focus ST	3	3 Laps	1:40.414	11
R	15	M		Tom OLIPHANT	Team BMW	BMW 330i M Sport	0	DNF	N/A	14
R	22	I		Chris SMILEY	Ginsters EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	0	DNF	N/A	20
R	62	I		Rick PARFITT Jr	EXCELR8 with TradePriceCars.com	Hyundai i30 Fastback N	0	DNF	N/A	24
NS	28	I		Nicolas HAMILTON	ROKiT Racing with iQuoto Online Trading	CUPRA Leon	–	DNS	N/A	26
NS	44	M		Andy NEATE	Racing with Wera & Photon Group	Ford Focus ST	–	DNS	N/A	–