Clio Championship battle heats up ahead of Brands finale

The fight for the Courier Connections Renault UK Clio Cup took another twist during rounds 15 and 16 at Rockingham, with Team Pyro’s Mike Bushell taking the lead in the championship standings with just two rounds left in the series.

The 25 year old came into the rounds at the Northamptonshire circuit in second place in the championship standings, just 19 points behind SV Racing’s Josh Cook, and looked to continue his recent form after a double podium finish at Knockhill. Bushell managed to do exactly that in qualifying, taking pole position for round 15 by just 0.120 seconds ahead of championship rival Cook, and started on the front row again in round 16 behind Cook. However, it was later revealed that Cook had received a 10 place grid penalty from an incident at Knockhill, meaning he would start 12^th for the first race of the weekend.

Bushell took full advantage of pole position, taking a lights to flag victory in comfortable fashion, crossing the line 4 seconds ahead of 20Ten’s Jordan Stilp, another driver who has been impressive during the course of the season, with SV Racing’s Ash Hand taking the final step on the podium. As for Cook, he was only able to manage 10^th in the race, which was soon promoted to 9^th after Westbourne Motorsport’s James Colburn was handed a 5 second penalty for an incident that occurred during the race. Despite the penalty, Cook had dropped to second in the championship behind Bushell, meaning the SV Racing driver would have to take a podium finish at least to close the gap to Bushell.

Cook started round 16 on pole position ahead of Bushell, but a poor getaway off the line seen him drop to 4^th after the first lap, with Bushell taking an early lead and, like in the first race of the weekend, didn’t look back for the remainder of the race. As for Cook though, thing went from bad to worse as he was one of four drivers that had been handed a drive through penalty for a false start, along with his team mates Alex Morgan, Ash Hand and Clio Cup debutant Simon Horrobin – Ant Whorton-Eales being the only SV Racing driver who had not been handed a drive through penalty; and to add further insult to injury, Cook was forced to retire after issues with his car forced him firstly into the pits, and then in the gravel trap with just two laps of the race to go.

With Cook enduring another miserable weekend, Bushell’s perfect weekend meant that he left Rockingham with a healthy 34 point lead from Jordan Stilp, who is now in 2^nd place in the championship standings after clinching a double podium, with Cook two points behind in third place. Stilp had also taken the championship lead in the Graduate Cup standings, just nine points ahead of Ant Whorton-Eales in 2^nd and ten points ahead of third placed James Colburn, while in the Masters Cup Lee Pattison maintained his lead in the standings, 31 points ahead of WDE Motorsport’s Paul Rivett, who had a strong weekend with a 4^th place finish in round 15 and 2^nd place in round 16.

As the Clio’s are missing for the next BTCC event at Silverstone, the stage is set for what will prove to be an intense showdown for the next driver to be crowned the Clio Cup champion of 2014, with 5 drivers mathematically still in the hunt for the title, although realistically it is between three drivers – Mike Bushell, Jordan Stilp and Josh Cook.

Written by Alan Faulkner

Photo credit: Jakob Ebrey Motorsport Photography