Dan Rowbottom emerged as winner from a hard-fought final British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Thruxton.
The bearded Midlander started his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus ST from fifth, but made a blistering start to get up to third place when the lights went out.
When poleman James Dorlin hit the kerb at Segrave, that appeared to unsettle the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla, and now Rowbottom was second.
The leader was reigning champion Jake Hill, who used the rear-wheel-drive traction of his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport to launch from third on the grid to the front of the field within 100 yards.
Hill had excess TOCA Turbo Boost in his pocket compared to Rowbottom and the other leading contenders, but could not prevent the Ford from spearing into the lead at Segrave on the second lap.
Hill came back at Rowbottom and, after the leading duo shook off an early change from the Alliance Ford of Dan Cammish, the race appeared to be between this pair.
But a mid-race safety car, caused when ninth-placed Adam Morgan put his left-side wheels on the grass entering Allard and fired his Excelr8 Hyundai into the barrier, brought more contenders into play.
Cammish was on the move at the restart and went around the outside of Hill into the chicane. But his lap of TTB usage to put a gap between himself and the rest meant he had none left.
Meanwhile, Ash Sutton went around the outside of Hill at the left-hand Noble kink, but contact to the Alliance Ford’s left rear from the BMW sent both off track, and Sutton into a spin.
While an apologetic Hill, who could only surmise that the aero wash had caused him to understeer into the Ford, was forced to the pits to have grass removed from his radiator, Sutton had remarkably dropped only to seventh.
Tom Ingram saved his two laps of TTB for the final stages of the race, but the boost-less Cammish did enough of a defensive job over the penultimate tour to leave Rowbottom with enough of a gap in hand over the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai once it had passed Cammish up Woodham Hill.
“The car’s been really good all weekend,” said Rowbottom, who crossed the finish line 2.260 seconds to the good over Ingram. “Not quite on the mark in race one and two, but [with] Paul [Ridgway] the engineer, we looked at everything together and that’s the result. They made a couple of tweaks and the Focus was on top form.
“It was a good way to end the day. We’ve had a great points haul this weekend.
“We had a couple of big moments. Jake and I have been scrapping all day. It’s been a really enjoyable day, I’ve enjoyed racing with him. We’ve had our moments in the past, but I think there’s a mutual respect there.”
Senna Proctor completed a strong BTCC comeback weekend with fourth in his Excelr8 Hyundai, only half a second in arrears of Cammish, while Sutton got past the Restart Racing Hyundais of Chris Smiley (sixth) and Dan Lloyd (seventh) late on for fifth.
But a five-second penalty for a false start dropped Lloyd down the final classification, while Smiley was later excluded when his Hyundai was found to be underweight – the mystified Restart team could offer no explanation why without further investigation.
Mikey Doble soared through from the back of the grid for eighth on the road in the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, but he was yet another to suffer from a penalty, in his case 10 seconds for track-limits offences.
As a result, the Speedworks Toyota of Aron Taylor-Smith was promoted from ninth on the road to sixth from 17th on the grid; Josh Cook, from the very back of the starting line-up following his exclusion from race two and with just three laps of TTB allowed for his One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R, did a fine job to claim seventh.
Tom Chilton (Excelr8 Hyundai) was classified eighth, with Lloyd ending up ninth and three-time champion Gordon Shedden (Speedworks Toyota) finishing the day in the top 10 after being the victim of incidents not of his making in the opening two races.
Dorlin had settled into sixth early on, only for the rookie to be forced out with a misfire.
