Tom Onslow-Cole secured a brace of points scoring finishes as the Team RAC ace brought the curtain down on his debut season in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton.

The 20-year-old had been forced to start the opening race from the seventh row of the grid but made a fine start to the opening race as he used the rear-wheel prowess of his BMW 320si to power up to tenth place mid-way through the opening lap before he understeered off at Church – slipping down to 15th in the process. Despite the understeer continuing to plague him for the remainder of the race, Onslow-Cole quickly set about making up places and he managed to take the flag in tenth place to pick up the final point.

“We had a new set up from qualifying,” he said. “I got as much heat as I could into the fronts on the formation and warm-up lap and they were feeling pretty hot – I even got out and checked them myself! And it was all fine up until we got to Church and, well it was understeer here we come.”

Race two saw Onslow-Cole again finish tenth after a race long battle with Tom Chilton but the final race would end in disappointment when contact with Mike Jordan's Honda at the Chicane damaged a trackrod on the BMW and put him into retirement in the final race of the year.

“We'd got the car a lot better for race three but unfortunately I had a coming together which broke one of the trackrods and I was unable to get back round and into the pits,” he said. “It's just one of those things; they're designed to break to save the rest of the car.

“It's been a very tough weekend but we seem to be making progress with the car but the better the car was it just didn't really show on track. I got held up a lot with various battles and once you have to start defending round here, you lose buckets of time on the leaders. Unfortunately I don't think the results really showed the improvements we made in the car.

“It's a shame to end with a non-finish because overall this season has been brilliant. It couldn't have got off to a better start really winning in my first season and I look forward to building on that next year.”