Moffat fends off Hill to secure race one Croft victory

Laser Tools Racing's Aiden Moffat secured his first British Touring Car Championship race victory in Infiniti machinery after holding off Jake Hill in the opening race of the day at Croft.

Having already clinched his first ever BTCC pole position during Saturday's qualifying session, Moffat led every lap of race one, despite receiving race-long pressure from the MB Motorsport Ford Focus ST of Hill in second position.

Moffat successfully retained his position ahead of Hill at the start of the race, while the MB Motorsport driver had to take to the escape route across the Chicane in order to keep ahead of Team BMW's Colin Turkington in third.

Turkington subsequently dropped to fourth behind the lead BTC Racing Honda of Senna Proctor at Tower Corner, with the front-quartet latched nose-to-tail before an early safety car phase briefly neutralised the race.

Once the marshals had recovered Dan Rowbottom's stricken Team Dynamics Honda, Hill once again piled the pressure on the race leading Infiniti Q50 of Moffat.

But Moffat was inch perfect in the defence of his race lead and crossed the line 0.5s ahead of Hill to take his first BTCC victory since Silverstone 2018.

Proctor held off Turkington to complete the podium order in third, while Josh Cook led championship leader Ash Sutton across the line in fifth and sixth.

Chris Smiley was the top Hyundai runner in seventh ahead of Ciceley Motorsport's Adam Morgan in eighth.

Home hero Dan Lloyd was ninth aboard his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra with former three-time champion Gordon Shedden rounding out the top-ten order in tenth.