Eaves takes Thruxton triple.

The Team Halfords Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship steam-roller continued at Thruxton for the third and final race with Dan Eaves driving from tenth place on the grid to a glorious victory.

In an action-packed and incident-strewn race, Eaves proved to be the absolute class of the field, taking his win comfortably from VX Racing's Colin Turkington.

The start was full of action as Tom Chilton went on a missile-run and managed to take off both Gavin Smith's and Colin Turkington's Astras. Whilst it was race over for both Smith and Chilton, Turkington's battled-scared car returned to the track to fight another lap.

With the stricken cars in a dangerous place, the safety car boards were shown, but Jason Plato was at exactly that moment sizing up Yvan Muller ahead for a pass for second place. This Plato acheived, before he saw the SC boards, and the Englishman was soon trying to let Muller retake the place. This Muller, no doubt with a glint in his eye, resolutely refused to do so, no doubt realising that his old friend Plato would get a penalty.

When the safety car returned to the pit-lane, Plato was soon past team-mate Hines for the lead whilst behind the jostling continued.

Through all this after starting from tenth place, Dan Eaves drove a very shrewd race. Coming into the reverse grid race, Eaves had spoken of looking at a damage limitisation exercise, but the seeming damage maximisation of all those around him made for an historic third race victory on the day for the Team Halfords driver who had only every notched up one previous BTCC victory.

The battle for second place went right down to the final corner, with Matt Neal and Yvan Muller battling for the place, only for Colin Turkington to take full advantage and win through for his first podium of the year.

Top finishers
1. Dan Eaves
2. Colin Turkington
3. Yvan Muller
4. Matt Neal
5. Jason Plato
6. James Pickford
7. James Kaye
8. Luke Hines