Hill storms clear to take comfortable race two win
MB Motorsport's Jake Hill stormed clear to take a convincing first British Touring Car Championship race victory of the season to close in on points leader Ash Sutton in race two at Croft.
The Ford Focus ST driver started race two from second on the grid but made light work of getting ahead of race one winner Aiden Moffat during the end of the opening lap at Sunny Out corner.
As was the case in the opening race, the safety car intervened during the early laps while Rory Butcher's stricken Toyota Corolla was recovered from its rest place at the penultimate corner.
That mattered little to Hill, who pulled away from the chasing pack with ease as Moffat was left to contend with the two BTC Racing Hondas of Senna Proctor and Josh Cook climbing all over the rear of his Infiniti.
With the two Honda Civic Type Rs trading places midway through the race, Moffat somehow managed to hold onto second position with maximum ballast following another superlative defensive display.
That meant Hill was able to breeze home to a near six-second win ahead of Moffat, to close to within 22-points of championship leader Ash Sutton, who finished behind Cook and Tom Ingram in fifth position.
Team Dynamics Honda's Gordon Shedden was sixth aboard his Civic Type-R, ahead of Team BMW's Colin Turkington in seventh.
Turkington recovered back up to seventh after being run off the road at turn one by Shedden on lap 13.
That thrilling exchange also allowed Sutton to move up to fourth at the time after the reigning champion made a superb move to scythe ahead of Ingram and Shedden into the Chicane.
Proctor ended up in eighth ahead of Chris Smiley and Adam Morgan in ninth and tenth.