TEAM VERTU TAKES VICTORY FROM BRUISING KNOCKHILL WEEKEND
Team VERTU ended a challenging weekend on a high at Knockhill with a third victory of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season.
The EXCELR8-run team headed for the Scottish circuit chasing a big haul of points to close the gap at the top of the standings, with Tom Ingram sitting second in the Drivers’ Championship and Team VERTU holding the same position in the Teams’ Championship.
Free practice provided the four drivers with the opportunity to try and dial in their cars for the unique challenges provided by the Fife circuit, with Ingram being the best placed of the quartet as he scored the seventh best time, with Ricky Collard also lapping inside the top ten.
Tom Chilton found himself less than half a second off the pace in the session, with Nicolas Hamilton in an encouraging 18th of the 23 cars.
Ingram would be drawn in the first qualifying group, and ended up sixth quickest having lost his fastest time to track limits, with Collard ending up as the lead Team VERTU driver on the grid for the qualifying race when he went fourth quickest in group two.
That left Collard eighth on the grid with Ingram in eleventh, with Chilton lining up in 14th and Hamilton starting from 20th.
The qualifying race itself would be a relatively subdued affair for the team, with Collard making up a spot at the start but ultimately ending the race where he started after being overhauled by Mikey Doble on the run to the line.
Ingram managed to gain two places as he climbed to ninth spot, with Chilton also gaining two positions to twelfth and Hamilton taking the flag in 20th.
Vastly different conditions greeted the team for the opening race of the weekend on Sunday with rain falling, with all four drivers able to stay out of trouble when the lights went out at the start – despite Ingram being slightly slow away from the line.
Collard managed to climb as high as fourth in the early stages before being overhauled for position, and he then allowed Ingram through to take fifth before the finish with the defending champion having worked his way onto the rear of his team-mate.
Chilton had hoped to join them in the top ten but was forced off into the gravel at the chicane and dropped to the back of the field, although a safety car period allowed him to close up the rear of the pack before battling his way through to 17th place at the finish.
An off-track moment for Hamilton left him to make an unscheduled trip to the pits before he finished a lap down in 22nd.
Conditions had improved by the time race two came around, but it would prove to be a short lived affair for Ingram when he was caught out by cars ahead jumping on the brakes to get through the chicane on lap one, with the resultant contact being sufficient to damage the radiator on his car and put him into retirement.
That left Collard to lead the team’s challenge with a typically feisty performance that saw him battle his way to fourth spot before finally finding a way ahead of race one winner Adam Morgan to bag his sixth podium of the campaign.
Chilton gained five spots to race his way into the points in twelfth, with Hamilton having looked on course to finish just outside the points until his car ground to a halt exiting the chicane on the penultimate lap following a late safety car period.
The reverse grid draw saw Chilton put onto pole for the final race of the weekend, and he made the most of experience – alongside the softer compound tyre – pay dividends as he led the way from start-to-finish to score his first victory of the campaign.
From tenth on the grid, Collard battled his way to ninth place on the medium tyre, with Ingram – complete with a new engine – also on the slower tyre but able to charge his way through from the back of the grid to take tenth and grab a few points back from Sutton in the championship race.
Running on the soft tyre, Hamilton ended the weekend with his most competitive performance to fall just shy of a points finish, taking the flag second amongst the Jack Sears Trophy runners.
Tom Chilton, #3 Team VERTU Hyundai i30 Fastback N, said:
“I’ve missed being on the top step of the podium so it’s nice to be taking a trophy home, particularly after it looked like it could be another of those weekends when I was facing the wrong way in the gravel in race one.
“When I got the reverse grid pole, I knew there was a real chance to go for the win, and I knew that I needed to make the most of the soft tyre in the early stages as I didn’t want to lose the opportunity.
“I gave it everything and every lap was a qualifying lap to get the gap I needed, and even when the others closed in a bit later on, I’d been able to keep my TOCA Turbo Boost so I knew it was there if I needed it.
“Getting the win is great and is a good boost in confidence ahead of Donington Park GP, where I’ve gone well in recent years.”
Ricky Collard, #11 Team VERTU Hyundai i30 Fastback N, said:
“It’s been a good weekend for me across the board, and it helped that we had a stronger Saturday which meant I wasn’t trying to battle my way through the field as much on race day.
“To make it six podium finishes for the season and to move up to fourth in the championship standings is fantastic, and the team has done a great job this weekend to give me the tools that I needed.
“It’s great to see Tom Chilton get a win for the first time this season and it means everyone else in the team has been on the top step of the podium with Nick having his Jack Sears Trophy win. I’m the only one who hasn’t made it there yet, so I need to make sure I put that right!”
Nicolas Hamilton, #28 Team VERTU Hyundai i30 Fastback N, said:
“I turned up this weekend feeling really positive, but it’s been a difficult weekend with the changeable weather conditions. Free practice was a really positive start as I was half a second quicker than last season, and then I was quicker again in qualifying before the weather started to have an impact.
“When the rain arrived, I was on the back foot a bit because I don’t have the experience of the car in those conditions to really get the most from it. There are a lot of things that we need to think about with my car with the servo brake system and what bias we run, and in race one in particular when it was properly wet, I just didn’t feel comfortable.
“We were quicker in the second race and I felt more at home before the alternator failed right at the end, and the team did a great job to make some changes for race three where we tried something new that worked. I started from 19th and came through to 16th despite losing places at the start, which was a solid way to end things.
“Obviously it would have been nice to score a point, but it was still a good way to end a challenging weekend.”
Tom Ingram, #80 Team VERTU Hyundai i30 Fastback N, said:
“As a team, it’s good to have come away from Knockhill with some trophies but it’s been a bruising weekend for me personally, and one where the only luck I had was bad luck.
“Had it not been for track limits, we’d have been up on the third row of the grid for the qualifying race rather than stuck in the pack where it was hard to try and make progress with the amount of boost that we had.
“We had an issue with the car in race one that meant I didn’t get the best of starts but we still managed to climb to fifth, and then in race two going into the chicane, the guys in front concertinaed up and there was nowhere to go. It didn’t look like the biggest of hits but it did a lot of damage, and that was game over.
“Because of the issues in the first two races, we changed the engine for race three, and that is probably the high point of the weekend for me because the team did an outrageous job to get that sorted in 45 minutes – it was an unbelievable effort.
“To come from the back of the grid to finish in the top ten was good in terms of making up places, but obviously we’ve not scored the points we were hoping for this weekend which is disappointing. However, we’ll keep pushing hard and will come out fighting when we get to Donington Park in a few weeks time.”
Justina Williams, Team VERTU Team Owner, said:
“It’s been a challenging weekend as a team in Scotland, with the obvious high point at the end of Tom Chilton getting onto the top step of the podium for the first time this year. It’s also been good to see Ricky score another podium and we’ve seen some strong pace from Nic, although it’s been a difficult weekend for Tom Ingram in terms of the championship.
“One thing that is for certain though is that we will keep pushing hard over the remainder of the season to bring the gap at the top of the standings down. This is a championship where you can’t take anything for granted and where things can change quickly, so it’s important that we maintain our focus and look to maximise every race.”
