BRANDS HATCH - ROUND 9 - RACE REPORT

Rounds 25, 26 & 27 of the 2006 British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch
September 23/24, 2006

Three strong races for Rob at Brands Hatch

The 2006 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship made a return visit to Brands Hatch for the penultimate meeting of the season this weekend.

For Rob, it was an opportunity to put the disappointments of recent rounds firmly behind him. With strong pace throughout the weekend and three finishes inside the top seven, this was exactly what he did.

On the 1.2 mile Brands Hatch Indy circuit, qualifying was always going to be close, but with 11 divers covered by less than half a second, every thousandth counted. Rob was quick throughout the session in the Team RAC MG, running on bio-ethanol fuel for the second time. At the end of the thirty minutes, he had set the sixth fastest time.

After qualifying, Rob said: "I'm pleased to have qualified sixth. It's important to get a good start in the first race tomorrow and a podium is certainly within reach."

Race one started with an early safety car period, following which, Rob put the works Astra of Tom Chilton under pressure. A little bit later, Rob's attention turned to defending from Team Halfords driver Gareth Howell. The pair ran side by side around Paddock and Druids on lap 22, but Rob managed to stay in front. A couple of laps later, Howell edged past at Clearways, but handed the position back to Rob when he spun on the following lap. This was enough to ensure Rob finished the race in fifth position.

Fifth was where Rob started race two, although he was quickly up to fourth, passing Tom Chilton away from the line. Lap four saw Rob lose out to a robust manoeuvre from Vauxhall's Fabrizio Giovanardi at the Druids hairpin. Contact between Rob and Tom Chilton on the next lap dropped Rob down to eighth, but he was able to pick up a place end the race in seventh. Rob sat patiently on the tail of Chilton and Giovanardi in the closing stages, ready to pounce if they made a mistake. Unfortunately for Rob, the chequered flag came first.

Having just missed out on the reversal of the top six finishers from race two, Rob started the third race of the day in seventh. In what was a fairly quiet race, Rob stayed seventh until the closing stages, when he picked up a spot at the expense of Tom Chilton, who had led much of the race before dramatically dropping down through the order. It was a strong end to a solid points-scoring weekend for Rob and Team RAC.

At the end of the weekend, Rob said: "After the results we had at Knockhill, I'm very pleased to have finished all three races, and to have finished them very strongly as well. We've scored some points with a fifth, a sixth and a seventh. We'd like to have had a little bit more speed. There have been times when I've been fast and haven't had the finishes, but today I'vae had the finishes but I didn't feel all that fast."

"We've got one more meeting, so we'll be flat out to try and achieve soms more strong results."

The final three races of the 2006 BTCC take place at Silverstone over the weekend of 14/15 October.