It was a lights-to-flag victory for Matt Neal in the second race of the day at Croft in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship in what looked to be a straight forward race for the 44-year-old.

Starting from pole in the fully ballasted Honda Civic, the two time BTCC champion never looked back as he took the turbo-powered Honda Civic to his 5th win of the 2011 season and increasing his lead at the top of the championship.

Speaking after the race he said, “It’s been a very unexpected weekend but I’m over the moon. If you can get it to the front then you can win and that’s what we did. I needed the safety car period to cool the front tyres down so that helped.”

Rob Collard took his second podium finish of the weekend and his first Independent win of the season as he guided his BMW to one better than the first race and the second spot on the podium. A dry race favoured the BMW who was able to pull away from third place and finish under a second behind Neal who took the win but as he explains the safety car period didn’t help him out.

“It was very hard work but the car was good. The safety car periods don’t play into my hands as I lose a lot of temperature in the tyres,” said Collard. “We were catching him at the end but just ran out of laps.”

A late charge from Andrew Jordan in the Pirtek Racing Vauxhall Vectra paid off as he took third position and with it another podium finish of the season after chasing down and passing Gordon Shedden into Clervaux during the latter parts of the race after starting the race from back in 6th on the grid.

“I could see Shedden and Jackson using their front tyres really hard so I knew if I could catch them then I could pass and that’s what I did,” said the 21-year old.

“I’m really pleased. I hit the tyres and that caused a vibration in the last few laps so I just took it nice and steady and take the points.”

Shedden had to settle for 4th after succumbing to the pace of Jordan and had to defend late on from Jackson, Chilton, Foster and Newsham who all crossed the line within a second of each other.

Andy Neate and Tom Onslow-Cole rounded out the top ten and gave Team Aon all three cars in the points.

It was disaster for Silverline Chevrolet as Jason Plato and Alex MacDowall both retired with mechanical problems as well as Tom Boardman who hit the barrier at the chicane bringing out the safety car early on.

Photo Credit: Jon Hobley

James Mappin is the editor-in-chief covering the British Touring Car Championship. You can contact him at james@btcccrazy.co.uk, on twitter @BTCCCrazy or on his personal twitter account @jamesmappin.