This weekend saw the Rockingham BTCC rounds 2018 with the British Touring Car Championship heading to the Northamptonshier circuit complete with the support series including the Renault Clio Cup, British F4, the Ginetta GT4 Challenge, and the Ginetta Juniors.
The weekend saw a few driver changes with Ollie Pidgley making his BTCC debut for Team Hard, Ricky Collard joining the series replacing his injured father Rob at Team BMW, and Glynn Geddie at AmD.
Saturday saw blue skies and the first free practice session saw championship leader Tom Ingram top the times ahead of Rob Austin and Sam Tordoff. Mike Bushell had another impressive practice session, finishing in sixth place. The second free practice session saw Dam Cammish top the times, as Bushell’s impressive run continued, bringing him to second place, ahead of Senna Proctor. Bushell’s season has seen promising free practice sessions followed by less impressive qualifying, so eyes were on Team Hard to see if this time the form could continue.
When the qualifying session started, both Bushell and Bobby Thompson put in fast laps, before slowly being pushed down the order as faster and faster laps appeared on the time sheets, but Bushell soon bounced back up the list again and ended up in his season best qualifying of fourth place, behind Adam Morgan, Tordoff and Cammish.
The first race on Sunday saw Morgan complete a flag to flag win, and he was joined on the podium by Ash Sutton and Tom Chilton. Last lap technical dramas saw championship leader Tom Ingram drop out of the race and out of the points.
In the second race, it was Ash Sutton who took the win after a dramatic start, with Morgan in second and Ingram in third. Chris Smiley crossed the line in sixth place but was demoted to seventh after his move on Bushell.
Smiley made up for that in the last race of the weekend, claiming his first win in the championship, ahead of Colin Turkington and Matt Simpson.
That puts Turkington at the top of the championship from Ingram, with Sutton in third.
The teams and drivers head north of the border to Knockhill in two weeks, in the meantime, here are some photos and videos from Rockingham.
