06/05/2003

Honda’s Matt Neal took the race victory in round three at Brands Hatch from Vauxhall’s Paul O’Neill after pulling off what appeared to be a controversial manoeuvre on the final lap. The Astra Coupe of O’Neill had led the race for a number laps and looked set to take the chequered flag much to the delight of the packed crowd when on-lookers were left in shock.

Neal appeared to deliberately nudge O’Neill sideways at Clearways sending the Astra Coupe wide and allowing Neal through to take the race win. However, Neal was quick to defend his move saying, “Paul left a little bit of a gap and I went for it. As much as I’d love to see Paul win again, if he leaves a gap, I’m going to go for it. I don’t have to be shown twice.”

O’Neill who was Neal’s team mate last year at Vauxhall commented, “It was just a racing incident. Matt would never hit me deliberately. We’re really good friends.”

After studying the footage of the incident, the stewards decided to take no action leaving Matt Neal to take up his pole position in the second race where more thrills and spills followed when MG’s Colin Turkington fell victim to yet another controversial move this time at the hands of Vauxhall’s James Thompson.

Earlier in the race, Paul O’Neill tried desperately to get past the MG of Turkington who was defending his line perfectly. After being told to let team mate and reigning champion Thompson through who was following the pair closely, O’Neill witnessed the coming together saying, “I saw James go up on the inside of Turkington and they touched then the MG got loose and hit James back.”

Thompson later added, “O’Neill let me through to have a go at Turkington because I was lighter and faster. I could see that Turkington was making mistakes at Graham Hill so I showed him my nose there. There was plenty of room but then Turkington closed the door on me.”

The Astra and MG made contact sending the latter into a slide but according to the Vauxhall driver, Turkington was able to regain control of his MG. Thompson said, “He gathered it up and then hit the rear quarter of my car. We both could have had the space to run side by side but ultimately he hit me and went out.”

Turkington, who found himself in the tyre wall as a result of the incident, later commented, “I knew that O'Neill was behind me who then gave way to Thompson. Coming out of Graham Hill I got a tap from behind which surprised me as it's not traditionally an overtaking part of the track and it just sent me off.”

No doubt more thrills and spills will be the order of the day when the series moves on to Thruxton in Hampshire on May 25th and 26th for rounds five and six.