The British Touring Car Championship resumed at the weekend following the summer break and began with Colin Turkington establishing new records and ended with him appearing before the stewards.
Many expected him to continue his love affair with Croft and put what has been an up-and-down first half of the campaign in his rear-view mirror — and initially it appeared very promising.
He opened his account on Sunday in textbook fashion around the 2.1-mile circuit as he punched in the fastest lap and collected the extra bonus point it warranted by taking a lights-to-flag victory in his West Surrey Racing-run BMW.
A time of one minute 21.07 seconds during Saturday’s Quick Six shootout was enough to put him on pole position — his seventh at the venue and the 29th of his tin top racing career.
That opening result was achieved with three tenths of a second in hand over 2022 champion Tom Ingram and was also significant as it took his success count in the British Touring Car Championship to 70.
Turkington — dubbed ‘King of Croft’ — looked odds-on to produce a similar result in the second race of the day and as he pulled away from Ingram.
However, things started to unravell when the Englishman reeled in — and battled past — Turkington, who then fell into the clutches of NAPA Racing UK’s Ash Sutton.
Carrying too much speed into Tower Bend, he hit Turkington’s rear and momentarily forced him off the track before he rejoined the action to cross the line in ninth.
Ingram was eventually passed by the Toyota Corolla GR Sport’s of winner Josh Cook and runner-up Rob Huff, while the podium places were rounded out by the NAPA Racing Ford Focus ST of Dan Rowbottom.
The reversed grid race produced the third different winner of the day in Tom Chilton, his Bristol Street Motors Hyundai i30 Fastback N avoiding trouble to come home in the place that it started: first.
Turkington, meanwhile, climbed from ninth to fourth in the space of five laps and was hunting down Ingram hard for the last piece of silverware.
A failed overtake at the hairpin was followed by side-by-side action at the Jim Clark esses and ended with the Portadown man running out of road and hitting the tyre wall. As in race two, he got going again and finished in the points in 14th.
However, he was visibly annoyed at the standards displayed by Ingram and the matter ended up in the stewards’ room, where Turkington was given the opportunity to put his case across.
After Sunday’s triple-header, the 42-year-old remains sixth overall in the standings — but the gap to those above him has again grown. With a provisional 178 points, he is now 75 behind Ingram, who now leads from BMW’s Jake Hill.