Rob Collard wins season opener at Brands Hatch
West Surrey Racing’s Rob Collard took an impressive win in the first race of the season of Brands Hatch, capitalising on a demon start and making the decisive move on team mate Andy Priaulx just after half distance.
Starting fifth on the grid, Collard carved his way past all three Team BMR Volkswagen CCs off the line and shadowed soft tyre-shod polesitter Priaulx until lap 15, when he made the move across the stripe and into Paddock Hill.
He then held off the BMR pair of Aron Smith and Jason Plato to the flag, with the top three covered by little over 0.8 seconds at the end. Plato set the fastest lap of the race, securing race two pole in the process, with both he and Smith passing Priaulx in the aftermath of Collard’s move on the Guernseyman.
Priaulx continued to slip back as his tyres went off, while Jack Goff made fine use of the same compound to take fourth for Triple Eight Racing MG, just holding off Team BMR’s Colin Turkington and Honda Racing Team’s Gordon Shedden.
Goff made it up to fourth with a good pass on Priaulx at Paddock on lap 16, with Andrew Jordan and Matt Neal also making it past before the end. It meant Priaulx finished ninth, with Tom Ingram rounding out the top 10.
It was a largely uneventful race, save for a few talking points. Neal and West Surrey Racing’s Sam Tordoff made contact on the first lap, with the BMW slipping back to 14th. Tordoff was unable to make any forward progress and finished 15th.
There was also a clash between Speedworks Motorsport’s Tom Ingram and Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan, when Morgan passed Ingram in a forceful move at Druids, only for Ingram to repay the favour at Graham Hill.
Derek Palmer retired the new Infiniti Q50 in the pits after 14 laps, while only 26 cars took the start as Andy Wilmot’s Welch Motorsport Proton Gen-2 didn’t make it out of the pits.
