Reid's triumph sets up thrilling finale

Scot Anthony Reid took a win and a second place in the penultimate meeting of the 2000 British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park, to set up a dramatic showdown with his Ford team-mate Alain Menu at the season finale next weekend.

Scot Anthony Reid took a win and a second place in the penultimate meeting of the 2000 British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park, to set up a dramatic showdown with his Ford team-mate Alain Menu at the season finale next weekend.

Once the series rule, which requires drivers to drop their worst four scores, is taken into account, Menu and Reid will go into the final round level-pegging, with the third Ford driver, Rickard Rydell, the only other person still able to win the drivers' title.

At Oulton Park, Honda's Gabriele Tarquini matched Reid's feat to also record a victory and a runner-up slot, while Vauxhall's Yvan Muller took third spot in both races.

Reid won a lively sprint race after resisting race-long pressure from Tarquini. Rydell started the weekend with hopes as high as those of Menu and Reid, but had a weekend to forget. It started in the worst possible way when he tangled with Menu at the start of the sprint.

The Swede's race was over in moments. Menu survived to run third in the early laps, before dropping back behind James Thompson's Honda and Muller after Thompson elbowed him aside at Lodge.

Thompson was later held up by a Class B car, and Muller snatched third place. Thompson held onto fourth, while Menu kept a frantic train of four cars behind him to take fifth.

Tarquini stormed away from the field in the feature race, and remained in control throughout, even when his lead was wiped out when the safety car had to be deployed after the Dane Tom Kristensen crashed his Honda without injury. Reid was almost as comfortable in second.

Muller lost out at the pit stops, but fought back to nip past his team-mate Jason Plato and Menu when the race re-started after the safety car period. Menu lost three valuable points when his engine cut out and he dropped to sixth place.