NAPA Racing UK enjoyed a fine weekend on track at the fastest circuit on the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship calendar, with two wins from three at Thruxton. The Hampshire venue also saw the NAPA Racing-Alliance Racing team celebrate the milestone of 100 BTCC starts together.
Qualifying itself would be a massive challenge as torrential rain that had been forecast arrived just before the session got underway.
Although Sam Osborne dropped out in Q1 to qualify in 21st place, Ash Sutton, Dan Cammish and Dan Rowbottom all made it through the first part of the session unscathed, although Rowbottom was then knocked out in Q2 to leave him tenth on the grid for the opening race.
Sutton then stormed to an impressive pole position in the Quick Six shootout to put himself at the front of the field for Sunday’s opening race, with Cammish only missing out on making it a front-row lock-out by 0.020s.
Conditions couldn’t have been any different for race day, with Sutton leading the field away at the start before an early caution period, unfortunately caused by Max Hall’s spinning Cupra, collecting Osborne.
After the restart, Sutton went wheel-to-wheel with title rival Tom Ingram trying to take the lead before contact between the pair at the final chicane meant they would both shortcut, with Ingram managing to get ahead into the lead. Sutton kept him honest, with Cammish following behind, until a loss of power mid-way through the race saw him slip back down to fourth spot.
Instead, it was Cammish who emerged as the best of the NAPA Racing drivers in second spot, with Rowbottom putting on a strong showing as he climbed his way through to finish in fifth.
Race two would be decided at the start, and in favour of Sutton as he rocketed away from the line to jump from fourth to first within half a lap of the lights going out. Once at the front, he quickly used a lap of turbo boost to break away from the chasing pack as he scored a third win of the campaign.
A difficult opening lap for Cammish had seen him shuffled back down to seventh, with Rowbottom amongst those drivers to have got ahead of the #27 car on the first tour. Battling throughout with Jake Hill, Rowbottom would come out on top of that fight to snare fourth spot, with a recovering Cammish also getting ahead of the BMW late on to take fifth.
Both would then gain an additional place after the race when Josh Cook was excluded for a technical infringement, giving Rowbo and Cammish a double podium for NAPA Racing UK.
It was a tricky race for Osborne, with contact seeing him off the road and into pits to remove debris from his radiator, which saw him finish a lap down in 20th spot
With the top six on the grid reversed for race three, hopes were high of another strong result to finish the weekend, and so it proved with Rowbottom fighting his way to a second win of the campaign.
From fifth on the grid, he enjoyed a strong opening lap to climb into second spot before overhauling Hill on lap two and was never headed despite a safety car period backing up the field at the half-way stage.
Cammish would also make forward progress and cleared Hill after the restart to sit in second spot before losing out to Ingram late on when the Hyundai driver was able to benefit from having additional boost in reserve, with Cammish having to settle for the final step of the podium.
Sutton had also been firmly in contention for the podium places before contact with Hill’s BMW 330i M Sport at Noble resulted in a high-speed spin across the grass. The #116 collected his Focus and managed to recover through to fifth at the finish. Osborne was finally able to score the kind of result his pace deserved as he worked his way from the back of the pack to finish in eleventh.
