Gordon Shedden has won the second race of the weekend at Rockingham to regain the Championship lead from his team-mate Matt Neal, who finished third.
Splitting the two works Honda Civics was the NGTC Toyota Avensis of Frank Wrathall and the Dynojet team – for Wrathall, it marked his best result to date in the BTCC. Jason Plato finished fourth while WSR’s Nick Foster rounded out the top five, but the fourth title contender, Mat Jackson, finished outside the top ten for the fifth consecutive race as he was shown the Black and Orange flag due to his back door flapping open.
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It took Shedden four laps to move into the lead of the race, but most of the hard work was done on the opening lap as he moved from sixth on the grid up to third, and from there he worked his way into the lead.
Two laps later and it was the turn of Wrathall to move ahead of Plato and into second, but Plato wasn’t able to shake them off and stuck with them for a few laps, before he backed off and allowed the lead duo to have their own battle.
Meanwhile, Neal was slowly catching up and on the seventh lap, he moved ahead of GoMobileUK.com’s Paul O’Neill at the Deene Hairpin – there was a slight touch which forced O’Neill wide.
The top four drivers were then in two pairs – Shedden against Wrathall while it was Plato against Neal and Neal snatched the position from Plato on lap fourteen, once again at Deene in a clean move.
Wrathall kept the pressure on Shedden but he was unable to get close enough to the Scotsman to make a move for the race victory – so it was left to Shedden to secure the honours from sixth on the grid, and he collected maximum points as he set the fastest lap of the race.
Behind the top two was Neal, Plato, Nick Foster – who repeated his race one result – James Nash in the Triple Eight Vauxhall Vectra, O’Neill, Jeff Smith in the second Pirtek Racing Vauxhall, Rob Austin from the back of the grid in the Audi A4 and Rob Collard rounded out the top ten in the second WSR BMW.
The reverse grid draw has seen the top ten reversed, so Collard will start the final race of the day on Pole Position, with Austin alongside him – BMW vs. Audi on the front row.
Shedden will start from tenth with the maximum ballast on board of his Honda Civic with Wrathall alongside him.
Shedden has opened up a slender five point advantage with his fifth victory of the season, with Neal sitting second and Plato third, 31 Points behind while Jackson, with no top ten finishes for five races, is still on 159 points, 45 Points behind Shedden.
In the Independents battle, Nash outscored Jackson and Jordan once again and heads into the third race as the new leader of the Independents’, ahead of Jackson and Jordan.