Graves wins outright as Kaye keeps lead.

Team Kaliber Sport with Barwell Motorsport scored its first ever British Touring Car Championship [BTCC] outright victory at Knockhill on Sunday, when Simon Graves took his Honda Accord across the finish line in the sprint race.

Team Kaliber Sport with Barwell Motorsport scored its first ever British Touring Car Championship [BTCC] outright victory at Knockhill on Sunday, when Simon Graves took his Honda Accord across the finish line in the sprint race.

After a fantastic drive, Graves notched up his first BTC Production Class win, whilst the sprint race handicap format worked perfectly as he took the flag just one second ahead of the Touring Class Vauxhall Astra of Jason Plato. Graves' team-mate and BTC Production Championship leader, James Kaye, also had a good weekend, taking second in the feature race and thus keeping hold of his points lead over arch-rival Simon Harrison (HTML Peugeot 306GTi).

The ever-changing Scottish weather conditions played their part in making Saturday's half-hour official qualifying session a bit of a lottery. With a heavy downpour less than ten minutes into the session, the grid positions came down to how good a first run on new slick tyres everyone had done during the early stages of qualifying. With no more dry running in the session, this left Kaye in second spot and Graves in fifth, behind impressive pole winner - Knockhill expert and racing school instructor - Gordon Shedden's Ford Focus.

Although Kaye got a good start in the sprint race, his extra 48kgs of success weight ballast made him a sitting duck on the straight for the weight-free Focus of Shedden, and it was the local man who nipped into the lead during the opening lap. Graves, meanwhile, drove a canny first few corners, during which he stormed past both HTML Peugeots of Harrison and team-mate, Roger Moen, to run third behind Kaye.

Without any penalty weight, Graves then closed in on Kaye, and radioed in that he felt he had the pace to catch and pass Shedden to take the win. Kaye thus let him past as they braked for the hairpin, but Harrison then smashed his Peugeot into the side of Kaye's Honda and pushed it off the road on the exit of the corner as he barged his way past into third.

Graves, however, was now on an incredible charge as he sliced Shedden's lead down from 2.5 seconds to nothing in just five laps. On lap 16 of the 20-lap encounter, he steamed down the inside of the Ford under braking for the hairpin, and took the lead which he then successfully defended over the remaining four laps. A fuming Kaye, meanwhile, hunted Harrison back down and pulled alongside as they braked for the hairpin for the final time. Unlike his rival, the Honda man kept it clean and gave Harrison room on the exit, but was unable to hang on to third place as the Peugeot driver used his car's superior power to outdrag Kaye to the finish line.

The 45-lap feature race followed a similar pattern, after being interrupted by an extended pace car period as an accident on the pits straight was cleared up. In the first half of the race, Shedden held sway out front from Kaye, Harrison and Graves. This time, however, the points leader cunningly slowed Harrison on the exit of the hairpin in order that Graves could then drive past both of them to take second on lap 20.

Once again, he started to reel in young Scot Shedden in and, ten laps later, battle recommenced as it had done a few hours earlier. Sadly, this time it was to end in tears for Graves, as a late swerve and brake by Shedden to defend his line into the hairpin left the Honda man with nowhere to go, and the Accord slammed into the back of the Focus. Although initially this put Graves into the lead as Shedden ran wide, the contact had damaged our car's radiator and before rising water temperature caused any damage to the engine, the team called him into the pits to retire.

This incident almost certainly cost Graves and the team another race victory, but they were able to find consolation in the fact that Kaye had put in a sterling performance to overcome his large weight handicap and take second place. This time the handling of Harrison's car faded significantly over the closing stages of the race, and he was in no position to repeat his 'rock-ape' tactics of earlier.

Currently, however, the results of this feature race remain provisional, as the BTCC officials are looking at video evidence of the incident between Graves and Shedden. This is part of an investigation into whether the Focus driver's defensive tactics were legal, just prior to the contact. If Shedden's tactics are deemed to be illegal, it is possible that he could be given a time penalty that would promote Kaye to race winner.

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