One Motorsport with Starline Racing left the sixth meeting of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship at Croft last weekend with plenty of silverware after a highly competitive showing.
Josh Cook locked out all three of the victories in the Independents’ Trophy, as well as claiming an outright overall podium in the final race of the weekend, fending off intense pressure from his rivals.
Team-mate Aiden Moffat quickly put some early-race misfortune behind him to power through the pack in race three. He sliced through 10 positions to claim a sixth place finish, and he was runner-up in the Independents’ rankings behind Cook.
Meanwhile, team returnee Jade Edwards made progress across all three races in the team’s Honda Civic Type R, and was within 0.5s of a points-paying finish in the reverse grid finale.
Cook has now increased his lead of the Independents’ Trophy competition to 80 points and has climbed to sixth position in the overall standings. The Bath racer said he was satisfied with his weekend’s return but was keen to push even further up the order.
“It was a good collection of results with a fourth, a fifth and a third,” said Cook. “We are still trying to find the secrets and unlock the ultimate pace from the One Motorsport with Starline Racing Honda but we are getting there and the car was very close last weekend. We can walk away with our heads held high.
“We have got a direction to go in with the chassis and we will work hard on that. Our tails are up at the moment and I want to carry that forward with positivity going into Knockhill (12/13 August). That is a great proving ground and we can go there and go on full attack.”
Scotsman Moffat qualified his hatchback racer on the fifth row of the grid for the opening rounds at the North Yorkshire track. He opted to use the hard tyres in race one, preferring to save the quicker tyres for the later races.
“It was going OK, but an incident dropped me down the order and out of the top 10, which would have been a decent performance,” said Moffat.
An incident in race two also affected the 26-year-olds start, but he recovered on track and came home in 17th position. Moffat started the weekend’s finale from the eighth row of the starting grid and battled his way through the pack on the softer tyres, claiming an impressive sixth spot and finishing right on the tail of the leaders.
Moffat added: “We had made some very positive changes with the car which has put us in a good place. For me, it was a case of ‘what might have been’ if things had have gone a little bit better.
“The thing to take away from the weekend, though, is that we have good pace in the car and that is a credit to the One Motorsport with Starline Racing crew and all the hard work that was put in in the build-up to the event.”
Edwards had not driven the new Honda Civic Type R FK8 machine since rejoining the squad, and went into the meeting at Croft determined to learn as much as she could about the two-litre turbocharged front-wheel-drive machine.
“I was making decent progress in race two but I had gained a false-start penalty which I will hold my hands up to – I was creeping on the grid a little bit as the lights went off" said Edwards. "There was some redemption in race three as I was able to go from 23rd up to 16th at the finish – which was oh-so-close to that magic points-paying position.
“I will take the positives from the weekend,” Edwards concluded. “We have finished every race and the car has been improving. The One Motorsport with Starline team around me is working really well and it is great to be back with the squad. I feel we have made some progress and I am looking forward to taking that momentum forward with me.”
The next rounds of the championship take place at the undulating Knockhill venue in Fife, Scotland, on 12/13 August.
