Turkington converts pole to win in Oulton opener

Defending British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington strengthens his grip on this season's title battle after taking a lights-to-flag win during the opening race of the day at Oulton Park.

The Team BMW driver secured his third win of the 2019 campaign to extend his points lead to 28-points ahead of Subaru's Ashley Sutton, who finished race one in eighth.

As expected, Turkington maintained the lead from pole position into turn one but did come under some degree of pressure from the chasing Honda of Dan Cammish in second.

Turkington initially struggled to pull away from Cammish during the first half of the race, but the three-time champion eventually broke Cammish's resolve following a lengthy safety car period mid-way through the race.

Cammish's Halfords Yuasa Racing team Matt Neal careered off the track at Druids on the sixth lap of the race after the left wheel of his Honda Civic Type R appeared to fall off the car midway through the fast right hander.

That triggered a multi-lap safety car period, but when the race restarted on lap 11, Turkington gradually asserted his dominance on the race and eventually pulled an unassailable 2.021s lead ahead of Cammish.

BMW Pirtek Racing's Andrew Jordan completed the podium order in third, a further 0.7s behind the second placed Honda of Cammish.

Jordan made a typically fast launch at the beginning of the race and a made a serious play for Cammish's second place, but the West Surrey Racing 3 Series ultimately had to yield to the Team Dynamics driver and slotted into third ahead of the AmD Hondas.

Rory Butcher got the better of his AmD Tuning team mate Sam Tordoff for fourth, while Tordoff successfully fended off Team BMW's Tom Oliphant for a top-five result in fifth.

Team Toyota GB's Tom Ingram dispatched two-time champion Jason Plato at the start of the race to finish a strong seventh, while Plato fell a further position further back to ninth after falling behind the Subaru of Sutton, who finished in eighth.

Sutton caught his former team mate Plato napping at the Island hairpin and moved ahead of the Vauxhall Astra on the penultimate lap of the race.

Ollie Jackson completed the remainder of the top-ten order in tenth for Motorbase Performance.