Mikey Doble inherited victory in the first British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Silverstone thanks to a five-second track-limits penalty for team-mate Aiden Moffat.
While the Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon duo dominated the race at the front, Ash Sutton fell just one point short in his efforts to clinch his record-breaking fifth BTCC title when Chris Smiley nabbed 11th position away from him with just one lap remaining.
Moffat got a much better start than poleman Doble, who also briefly fell behind the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport of Daryl De Leon, but was back in front of the Anglo-Filipino when they arrived at the Brooklands left-hander.
The gap between Moffat and Doble ebbed and flowed depending on TOCA Turbo Boost usage – each had the maximum 14 laps – but with four laps remaining came news that Moffat had exceeded his track-limits period of grace.
The Scot held on at the finish as the PMR Audis flashed across the line separated by less than 0.1 seconds, but it was Doble who continued his run of winning form dating back to the finale last time out at Croft.
“We need to try and get our head around these starts,” said Doble. “It was raining on the warm-up laps, so my tyres were a bit colder than those behind me.
“It was a bit of a game of chess with my team-mate with the boost, and I feel a little bit sorry for Aiden. I was conserving my boost for the last lap, because it would have been a grandstand finish.
Photo by: JEP
“I didn’t want to slow him down [once news of the penalty arrived] by battling and drop him down the field.”
Tom Chilton moved his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback past De Leon at Brooklands on the second lap, and it was the cheerful Surrey man who gained second place in the final classification.
Chilton spent a portion of the race with the WSR BMWs of De Leon and Charles Rainford on his tail, and this was a terrific performance from Rainford, who was the highest-placed of those running the medium-compound Goodyear tyres in this race against the softs of the majority.
Neither of the BMWs could fend off Josh Cook though. The Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport man got past Rainford out of Becketts on the 15th lap, then chiselled his way ahead of De Leon at Woodcote with a lap remaining. Cook’s fourth on the road was converted to third with Moffat’s penalty.
Moffat was finally classified fourth, with De Leon fifth and Gordon Shedden another to work his way past Rainford, the Laser Tools-liveried Speedworks Toyota taking sixth.
Adam Morgan was a lonely eighth in his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon, with team-mate Dan Rowbottom losing out in the battle for ninth to the Speedworks Toyota of Aron Taylor-Smith. These three were all on medium tyres.
The championship leaders were all out of contention in this race with their lack of TTB. Sutton and points runner-up Cammish ran medium tyres, with third man Tom Ingram going for softs.
Photo by: JEP
Cammish was running 11th in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium, one place ahead of team-mate Sutton, and on course to keep the title race at least theoretically open for a couple more hours.
Then the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman was forced into the pits and, after losing two laps, rejoined to at least make the finish.
That put Sutton on course for the crown. He and reigning champion Ingram had battled their way up to ninth and 10th on the opening lap, but a three-wide into Brooklands the next time around with Taylor-Smith ended with contact that sent Ingram’s Excelr8 Hyundai into a spin.
While Ingram attempted to recover, the five points for 11th position looked set to wrap things up for Sutton, before Smiley’s Restart Racing Hyundai denied him. Sutton and the resurgent Ingram flashed across the line together, 12th and 13th, with two-time champion Ingram now out of the title hunt.
Also in this scrap early on was Dexter Patterson, who then slipped back but provided further joy for the PMR Audi squad by wrapping up the Jack Sears Trophy title for 2026.
BTCC Silverstone – Race 1 results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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