ONE MOTORSPORT WITH STARLINE RACING BACK ON TOP AS BTCC BATTLE RESUMES AT CROFT
One Motorsport with Starline Racing left the sixth meeting of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship at Croft last weekend with armfuls of silverware after a highly competitive showing.
Josh Cook locked out all three of the victories in the Independents’ Trophy and claimed an outright podium overall in the final race of the weekend, fending off intense pressure from his rivals.
Team-mate Aiden Moffat quickly put some early-race misfortune behind him to power through the pack in race three. He sliced past 10 rivals to claim a sixth placed finish and he was runner-up in the Independents’ rankings behind Cook.
Team returnee Jade Edwards meanwhile made progress across all three races in the team’s Honda Civic Type R and was within 0.5s of a points-paying finish in the reverse grid finale, which underlined a successful comeback and has given her cause for optimism for the remainder of the season.
Cook has now pushed his lead of the Independents’ Trophy competition to 80 points and has climbed to sixth position in the overall standings. The Bath racer said he was satisfied with his weekend’s return but was keen to push even further up the order.
“It was a good collection of results with a fourth, a fifth and a third,” said Cook. “We are still trying to find the secrets and unlock the ultimate pace from the One Motorsport with Starline Racing Honda but we are getting there and the car was very close last weekend. We can walk away with our heads held high.
“We have got a direction to go in with the chassis and we will work hard on that,. Our tails are up at the moment and I want to carry that forward with positivity going into Knockhill on August 12-13. That is a great proving ground and we can go there and go on full attack.”
Scotsman Moffat qualified his hatchback racer on the fifth row of the grid for the opening rounds at the North Yorkshire track. He opted to use the less-favoured hard tyres in race one, preferring to save the quicker tyres for the later races.
“It was going OK but I got a little nudge wide, which dropped me down the order and out of the top 10, which would have been a decent performance,” said Moffat. “There was even more drama in race two when I got pushed wide at the start. That spat me onto the grass which pitched me sideways right across the pack…which was interesting to say the least.”
The 26-year-old recovered the track and came home in 17th position. He started the weekend’s finale from the eighth row of the starting grid and battled his way through the pack on the softer tyres, claiming an impressive sixth spot and finishing right on the tail of the leaders.
Moffat added: “We had made some very positive changes with the car which has put us in a good place. For me, it was a case of ‘what might have been’ if things had have gone a little bit better.
“The thing to take away from the weekend, though, is that we have good pace in the car and that is a credit to the One Motorsport with Starline Racing crew and all the hard work that was put in in the build-up to the event.”
Edwards had not driven the new Honda Civic Type R FK8 machine since rejoining the squad and went into the meeting at Croft determined to learn as much as she could about the two-litre turbocharged front-wheel-drive machine.
She was delighted to have made it to the flag in all three races and felt that she had made strong progress. Her performance in race three, where she was dicing through the mid-pack in her pursuit of her first points of the season, was particularly impressive.
The Ascot racer said: “I was making decent progress in race two but I had gained a false-start penalty which I will hold my hands up to – I was creeping on the grid a little bit as the lights went off. There was some redemption in race three as I was able to go from 23rd up to 16th at the finish – which was oh-so-close to that magic points-paying position.
“I will take the positives from the weekend,” she concluded. “We have finished every race and the car has been improving. The One Motorsport with Starline team around me is working really well and it is great to be back with the squad. I feel we have made some progress and I am looking forward to taking that momentum forward with me.”
Team owner Steve Dudman was full of praise for the three drivers at the conclusion of the weekend, although he has said that no stone will be unturned in the continued quest for speed over the remaining four meetings of the season.
Dudman said: “Josh was stunning over the course of the three races. Between himself and his engineer Mick Cook and all the guys around him, they did a brilliant job. Josh might be slightly disappointed that he didn’t claim a first place overall, but that is simply because he is a winner and we are winners too, so we will continue to push as hard as we can to get him there.
“It was great to see Jade with a smile on her face and she was very unlucky to miss out on points in race three. She had to avoid a spinning car in front of her which cost her a really strong finish, but we were over the moon with her performance. She has definitely upped her game since she was last with us.
“Aiden had a strong weekend although he had some rough treatment from his rivals. He had a really lucky escape in race two when he had been spat onto the grass away from the line, and I am just grateful that he didn’t get collected by another car as he spun back across the pack. His fightback in race three showed that he didn’t let his head drop and that is a great credit to him.”
There were some significant new faces at the One Motorsport with Starline Racing team last weekend and Dudman says the ingredients are being put together to assist the push over the latter part of the 2023 campaign.
“We have some very big developments in the pipeline to push the cars forward and we had the car’s designer, Barry Plowman, as part of our staff at One Motorsport with Starline Racing at Croft, which was a real pleasure,” said Dudman. “We are all pushing as hard as we can.”
The next rounds of the championship take place at the undulating Knockhill venue in Fife, Scotland, on August 12-13.