Cammish: It’s a weight off my shoulders

Honda's Dan Cammish says winning the final British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton has lifted 'a weight off his shoulders' after taking his first victory of the 2019 season.

The Team Dynamics driver kept his cool during a torrential downpour towards the end of the reverse grid race to seal the win ahead of Power Maxed Racing's Rob Collard after passing the Vauxhall driver on the tenth lap of the race.

Cammish's third career BTCC win was his ninth podium result of the season and has moved the 30-year old up to third in the drivers' standings behind BMW duo Colin Turkington and Andrew Jordan.

"I’m so delighted," Cammish told Crash.net "It’s a weight off my shoulders. That was my ninth podium. I’ve been knocking on the door for a long time now. I’ve been a serial podium finisher.

"It wasn’t going unnoticed to me more than anyone that we couldn’t quite win a race. I was fast and usually way up on the guy finishing third maybe but didn’t have enough to beat the leader.

"We dug deep all day today. We worked hard with the car and got it there for qualifying. I thought the P3 lap was very good with the weight on. This morning, from the second I got in the car, we’ve been chasing it. I’m really proud of the team of digging deep and not giving up.

"The second I was drawn out in second I knew I had a chance because we’ve worked at the car."

Cammish admitted he toyed with the idea on banking the points in second position behind Collard in race three, but the Honda driver pounced on a small error by the Vauxhall runner at Church, which allowed him to pull ahead and into an unassailable lead by the final chicane.

"There’s no doubt he [Collard] had an answer. The one place I thought it was on was maybe turn two. I’d been eyeing that up for a few laps because I could see he was braking a bit earlier than me," the Honda driver continued.

"I was also thinking ‘this is mega points, twice second and a fifth, do you really want to risk this?' I had a couple of looks at the final chicane but he was good on the brakes.

"I knew if I got very close out of Church and be almost ahead then maybe I’ve got a chance. He just made a small mistake and that was it."

Having jumped ahead of BTC Racing Honda driver Josh Cook up to third in the standings, Cammish admits his excitement over the prospect of trying to hunt the BMWs down as the title race inches closer to its climax.

"I’m excited. I didn’t expect the BMWs to struggle like they did this weekend. Being behind Tom [Oliphant] there, there really isn’t much in it," said Cammish.

"They had such a strong start, they’ll be hard to catch. Looking at it now, there’s still three rounds to go, so if we can keep our form and things don’t go their way, we can be well back in this."