Matt Neal and Computeach racing with Halfords went through all the joy and all the strife of touring car racing in rounds seven, eight and nine of the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone.

A brilliant win in the first race of the day, could so easily have been followed by another in the third race, but instead Matt was knocked out of contention while battling for the lead with only a handful of laps left to run.

Dan Eaves’s day in the team’s second Honda Civic Type-R was much more consistent. He put in three solid drives to take two sixth places and a fifth.

Matt was understandably overjoyed after winning round seven on a track that still had plenty of tricky damp patches on it following overnight rain.

“I’m absolutely over the moon,” he said. “And it was a good clean race too.”

The crucial moment came when Matt challenged Jason Plato for the lead. “I went down the inside into Abbey,” Matt explained, “then we were side-by side up to Bridge, and I hoped he’d bottle it there, but he didn’t. I was on the inside though and just managed to get ahead and muscle my way across to the apex at Priory.”

After that it was pretty much plain sailing for Neal. “Then Jimmy (Vauxhall’s James Thompson) got in on the act and started hassling Jason and they started tangling with each other.” That gave Matt the small break he needed and he motored away to a comfortable win as Dan backed him up with an excellent fifth place.

In race two Neal and Eaves were right where all the action was in a hectic battle for the places in the second half of the top 10. Eaves, who’d started higher up the grid and had less success ballast on board, took sixth place, while Neal, whose first race win had only earned him 10th place on the grid and a maximum load of success ballast under the series new-for-2004 reverse grid rules, battled through to eighth.

In race three Matt worked his way skilfully up the field from eighth and by the 15th of 16 laps was challenging Anthony Reid for the lead. That’s when it all went wrong. “We had it in the bag and would have been the first car to bag two wins on one weekend this year. I’m desperately upset for the whole team and don’t think it was at all fair the way I was driven off the road,” explained Matt after the pair had clashed on the exit of Becketts.

Matt’s Civic was damaged in the incident and he dropped down the field to finish back in eighth after a further bruising incident on the last corner.

Dan took another excellent sixth place in this one to rack up more points for himself and the team.