One Motorsport’s Josh Cook admitted to being ‘disappointed’ to leave his home round of the British Touring Car Championship with only a pair of thirds and an 11th-place finish.
Cook, 31, is a ten-time winner at the high-speed Thruxton circuit, but this year the Bath-based racer was unable to add to that tally.
A quarter of a second from pole in qualifying, Cook put his Honda in third on the grid for the opening encounter, which is where he ultimately finished in a race which saw fewer overtaking moves than usual.
Unable to press forward against the rapid Ash Sutton and Tom Ingram ahead, Cook had to settle for another third in race two, before being drawn to start from tenth on the grid for the final race of the day.
With progress throughout the field being difficult, Cook went on to finish 11th after losing out to both Ingram and Sutton at the start, although he later got back by the Ford driver to gain a crucial additional point.
His two podiums in the opening races were also class victories in the Independents’ category, allowing Cook to further extend his advantage at the top of the class table to 40 points over team-mate Aiden Moffat.
“The team has done and incredible job and shown its resolve in spades,” said Cook. “Everyone was working flat-out to find these little gains and improvements that we could make and there was progress in the car over the course of the three races.
“Ultimately, the fact I was disappointed with two third places and an 11th – and two Independents wins – shows that we set the standard high at One Motorsport with Starline. The car is improving all the time and we need to keep the momentum going.
“Given the steps we made forward at Thruxton, it will give us hope going into the rest of the rounds this year.”
Team owner Steve Dudman put the team’s inability to take home another Thruxton win down to some small niggles, which the team had worked on late into Saturday night to try and resolve.
“What a fantastic weekend for everybody at One Motorsport with Starline Racing,” added Dudman. “We had some senior guests from Starline with us, which was an honour, and we were able to put on a great show to give them some memories to take away and put some smiles on their faces.
“We have had some little niggles with the car that we couldn’t quite put our finger on and so we will go back to base and we will investigate thoroughly.
“You can never question the commitment or pace from Josh though, he was extracting the maximum from the word go. He was able to come away with a bunch of trophies, so that was positive.
“We might not have had the overall results we wanted but the improvement is there, and we will go to Oulton Park looking to build even further.”