BTCC Croft: Cook holds off Hill to claim race one honours

BTC Racing's Josh Cook took his second British Touring Car Championship race victory of the season after resisting MB Motorsport's Jake Hill for the race one win at Croft.

Cook started the opening race from pole position and successfully tamed the greasy but drying conditions to lead every lap ahead of fellow Honda runner Hill.

Despite Cook's Honda Civic Type-R looking more nervous and twitchy of the leading duo, the BTC Racing driver managed to control the gap back to Hill. Hill did threaten to snatch early in the race, but Cook recovered and set the fastest lap in the process.

Hill, however, did save one final attack for the last lap of the race and came perilously close to the rear of Cook's Honda at the final hairpin, but came 0.6s short as the pair crossed the line.

Behind the leading Honda duo, defending four-time champion Colin Turkington turned up the heat in this season's title race by scoring yet another podium finish in third. 

Turkington emerges from the opening Croft race as the joint championship-leader after Ash Sutton was forced to scythe his way back through the pack after early contact with Motorbase Performance's Rory Butcher.

Having made a lightning start, Sutton ended the opening half of the first lap directly behind Turkington in fourth position, but was subsequently tipped into a spin by Butcher, who was trying to make his way past Turkington's Team BMW team mate Tom Oliphant.

That brief moment of contact dropped Sutton back down to 14th, but, in typical fashion, the Infiniti Q50 driver charged back up the order to take fifth behind Butcher in fourth.

Tom Chilton was Sutton's final victim after the Laser Tools Racing driver demoted the BTC runner to sixth with just over two laps to go.

Three-time champion Matt Neal registered a seventh place as the top factory Honda runner, while Bobby Thompson held off Adam Morgan and Dan Cammish for eighth.