Team BMW‘s Colin Turkington is in business with his first win of the 2023 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) season on Sunday morning at Brands Hatch.
Turkington had to complete the start twice, with Dan Cammish initially on pole but a 45-minute delay paid heed to initial progress as a four-car melee saw the race neutralized for 45 minutes.
As Stephen Jelley was stopped out on the circuit after going into the pit wall carrying Andrew Watson, Adam Morgan, and Dan Rowbottom with him.
All now have work to do to salvage their days, especially in the case of Jelley and Morgan, but while it was a disheartening start for one side of the garage. Turkington provided some joy as he again took the top spot from Cammish at the start.
Cammish again was the one to suffer on the restart in a truncated 18-lap affair, as he dropped to fourth behind Turkington, Hill, and Sutton in the end.
Sutton initially around the fourth lap troubled Turkington bringing the gap down to less than a second.
But as Turkington started to get better use of his softer option tyres and also hybrid, he had no such issues for the rest of the race. Further down, there were great battles as Tom Ingram battled past Rory Butcher into fifth, and in the latter stages, Bobby Thompson relegated Butcher further.
Thompson has starred throughout the weekend and ahead of Butcher, he finished also closing out the top ten ahead of Josh Cook, Ricky Collard and Dan Lloyd, with the usual battle to the line throughout the top 20.