Cook claims victory in thrilling season opener

BTC Racing's Josh Cook has won a dramatic British Touring Car Championship season opener after the wet-dry conditions caused chaos at Brands Hatch.

The Honda Civic Type R driver started the race from tenth position but an inspired decision to run the slick tyre, while the majority of the field elected to run the wet weather tyre paid dividends.

Although the race started under similar greasy conditions to that of yesterday's qualifying session, Cook found himself in the lead of the race by the end of the ninth lap.

While the slick tyre runners struggled to match the pace of the wet tyre cars throughout the very initial stages, it was the Subaru of Ashley Sutton who led away from pole position and was closely followed by the trio of BMWs, led by Andrew Jordan in second.

However, it quickly became apparent that the wet tyre was indeed the slower rubber to be on that stage in the race, which meant the leading pack became sitting ducks as the slick rubber began to gain temperature.

By lap seven, Cook had already fought his way back up to eighth position before moving into an unassailable after scything past Sutton on the exit of Clark corner on lap nine.

Cook's lead did begin to come under some degree of threat towards the latter stages as the race leader was forced to pick his through the lapped traffic, such was the lead the slick tyre cars managed to assemble over the wet tyre runners.

At the end of the race, it was the slick tyre runners who locked out a topsy-turvy top-seven order with Jake Hill finishing in second position for his new TradePriceCars.com squad.

Hill started the race from 15th, but in a mirror image of last year's wild second race, the Audi S3 driver made the correct tyre call to secure another unlikely podium result.

Motorbase Performance's Tom Chilton completed the podium in third, ahead of Mercedes duo Aiden Moffat and Adam Morgan in fourth and fifth.

Bobby Thompson was an impressive fifth aboard his Team HARD Volkswagen CC, while Team Parker Racing's Stephen Jelley put the disappointment of being disqualified from qualifying to salvage seventh.

Honda's Matt Neal was the first of the wet tyre runners to cross the line in eighth, ahead of pole-sitter Sutton, who eventually dropped to ninth and AmD Tuning's Rory Butcher in tenth.

Elsewhere, despite starting from 28th, ex-F1 driver Mark Blundell took advantage of the conditions on dry tyres to score points in 14th at the first time of asking, while defending champion Colin Turkington could only manage a 19th place finish, having started from third.