Dan Cammish went some way to healing the wounds of missing out on the 2019 Championship by taking victory in the first race of the delayed 2020 BTCC season.
Colin Turkington had kept the lead from pole, however was unable to break away from the following pack with Ash Sutton, Cammish and Tom Ingram all within a second of the leader.
Sutton showed more pace than Turkington and made his move on lap 4, getting an overlap on the outside out of the Old Hairpin giving him the inside into McLean’s.
Sutton and Turkington then made contact and Cammish slipped past them both to take the lead.
Turkington then tapped Sutton into a spin through Coppice, putting Sutton at the back of the pack.
The order at the front stayed the same with Rory Butcher pressuring Turkington until the Safety Car was deployed after Senna Proctor’s Hyundai had a mechanical failure and Nic Hamilton became beached on the gravel at the exit of the final chicane.
Cammish had an effective restart, putting a good gap between himself and Turkington.
Ingram overtook Tom Oliphant into Redgate for fourth with the ever-opportunistic Matt Neal also taking Oliphant for fifth.
Cammish kept the lead to win from Turkington by just 0.707s with Butcher taking the final podium spot in the brand new Mk.4 Ford Focus ST.
Ingram stayed ahead of Neal to take fourth with Neal coming home fifth and Oliphant following close behind in sixth.
Sam Osbourne, on his debut for the MB Motorsport team, had a fantastic race eventually finishing seventh just under a second ahead of the Hyundai of Chris Smiley, also on it’s debut in the series.
Stephen Jelley and Tom Chilton rounded out the top ten after both had effective and clean races.
Bobby Thompson and Adam Morgan finished just outside the top ten in 11th and 12th respectively.
Although he went off track multiple times, Josh Cook was able to finish in the points in 13th.
Despite being spun to the back of the pack, Ash Sutton worked his way up to the points, taking the fastest lap on the final lap of the race just ahead of his team mate Aidan Moffat after both Infiniti’s showed good pace throughout the race.
Race 2 is due to start at 13:30 BST.
Featured Image Credit: TouringCarTimes.com
