Team BRISTOL STREET MOTORS endured a trying weekend as the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship made its annual trip to Scotland for the seventh meeting of the campaign at Knockhill, but was still able to celebrate scoring a double podium for the second successive round.
The EXCELR8 Motorsport-run squad headed into the weekend looking to build on a solid weekend at Croft, where Tom Ingram had established a 21 point lead in the standings and Tom Chilton had battled to his first win of the campaign to help the team to close the gap on rivals NAPA Racing UK in the Teams’ Championship race.
The weekend started well as both Ingram and Chilton lapped inside the top ten in mixed conditions during opening practice, whilst Ingram and local hero Ronan Pearson were well placed in FP2 as they lapped within half a second of the pace – with Chilton close behind.
Qualifying however would prove to be a huge challenge for the Hyundai squad, with three of the four cars failing to make it through Q1. Ingram would struggle from his lack of hybrid as championship leader and missed out on progression by just 0.024s, with Pearson just 0.014s further back – leaving them in 15th and 16th on the grid.
Nick Halstead would also fail to progress but was able to set the 19th best time, leaving Chilton to fly the flag into the second part of the session, where he would end up setting the ninth fastest lap.
All four drivers elected to run the medium compound tyre in race one and take the hit of running the slower tyre first, which would ultimately impact on the results.
Chilton would be the best of the quartet in 14th place – making him the third best driver on the harder compound available – with Pearson and Halstead having to settle for 17th and 19th positions.
For Ingram, there was huge disappointment however after contact with the Toyota of Aiden Moffat whilst battling for position forced him into the pits to retire and left him at the back of the grid for race two.
Now running the soft tyre, Ingram got away well at the start to move up into 16th spot and onto Chilton’s tail, with the two working together to move their way through the pack until Ingram took a trip across the grass after a clash with Chris Smiley – dropping him back down the order.
As Chilton climbed his way through to take a solid ninth place, Ingram was forced to battle back from his trip across the track to try and work his way into the positions that would allow him to benefit from the reverse grid draw, and he would clinch tenth on the final lap to also score valuable championship points.
Pearson was well set to join then in bidding for the top twelve positions when he was forced into the pits with a potential power steering issue, whilst Halstead struggled to get the best from his tyres but was still able to make up two spots to finish in 17th.
