Josh Cook ‘worked the system’ to score his first British Touring Car Championship victory in almost two years in the second race at Oulton Park.
The Speedworks Motorsport driver started from eighth on the grid but was in the lead by the end of the opening lap, thanks to a fast start and being the leading driver running the favourable soft tyre.
Cook was in fifth by the exit of the first corner, before passing Jake Hill around the outside at the hairpin and picking off NAPA Racing UK duo Dan Cammish and Ash Sutton over hilltop.
Tom Ingram then made life easy for Cook, the EXCELR8 Motorsport driver not defending as Cook swept into the lead at Lodge corner at the end of the lap.
“It was good – I picked the right sides, and it opened up,” explained Cook to TouringCars.Net. “Obviously, the tyre I was on helped and I went into the race with an open mind.
“I knew that the car was strong on soft tyres and that if I got off the line well the guys at the front would be thinking about the championship and I wasn’t. I think that was evident when I stuck my nose in and it wasn’t fought too hard.”
Whilst Cook was pleased with both his first win of the year and his first at Oulton Park, moving him up to joint fifth in the drivers’ standings, he wasn’t getting carried away with his performance just yet.
“Last year wasn’t ideal, we had some pace at times and should have won a couple of races, but unfortunately things didn’t fall our way.
“This year we’ve been a bit too quick to be in with a shout of a reverse grid, and not quick enough to win.
“Luckily, qualifying yesterday didn’t go to plan and we were starting lower down than we normally would have done.
“We’ve been able to work the system with the tyres and the hybrid and luckily it’s paid off. The plan of action from the start of today was to sacrifice race one to get rid of the hard tyres, then put the softs on, get a result in race two and see what we can do in race three.
“I’m under no illusions that we did really well in that one because we played the game. We’ve still got some work to do in terms of outright lap pace, and we’re still developing the car and making steps forward.
“I wasn’t overly happy with the balance in that race – I pushed to feel what we had, work out what we need to keep changing and working on for the final race.
“It’s a win, I’ll take it, but we’re not all jumping with joy because we know that we’ve still got work to do.
“I’ll only have one lap of hybrid in race three and we’ve got a bit of development work still to do on the balance of the car, so we’ll end up where we end up.”