BTCC Snetterton: Sutton in control to take finale win ahead of Plato

Three-time and reigning champion Sutton was drawn on reversed-grid pole position and, after appearing to get a strong initial launch in his Motorbase Performance-run Ford Focus, he seemed to bog down and that allowed Dan Rowbottom to sweep into the lead.

But then Rowbottom ran a little too hot into the Agostini left-hander, and the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R driver was unable to prevent Sutton getting a run on him and claiming the lead into the following Hamilton bend.

Into the next turn, the tight right-hander at Oggie’s, veteran Jason Plato also made an opportunist move to get his BTC Racing Honda down the inside, slight contact being made as Plato made his way into second position.

Plato, in his landmark 650th BTCC start, put pressure on Sutton in the early stages, but by the fourth lap the Ford had eked the gap out to over a second.

Plato now had to run some laps without hybrid to stay within his allocation, allowing the leader to get away, and at the end of the 12-lap race Sutton breezed to the flag to take his second win of the season by 4.556s.

“It’s mega,” said Sutton. “If I’m honest we had exactly the same settings on the car as race two, but damage in that one put the alignment out.

“If I’d had that car in race two it could have been a different story.

“We set up the car for a long race and she was a bit lively but consistent – Jason got close, but I put my head down and set some quali laps to pull away.”

Jason Plato, Rich Energy BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Rowbottom found himself without hybrid, an affliction that coincidentally also stymied team-mate Gordon Shedden’s freshly engined car following its retirement from race two.

Rowbottom stayed in third position for four laps, before Ricky Collard managed to battle his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla ahead, and Tom Ingram also took advantage to sneak into fourth.

Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N stayed glued to the rear bumper of Collard until the last lap, when he pulled off a superb cutback manoeuvre out of Agostini to grab the position into Hamilton.

But Collard wasn’t finished – he saw a chink of light on the inside of the Hyundai into Oggie’s, dived in to fill it, and barged Ingram wide onto the dust and marbles to reclaim the final podium spot.

The Toyota driver was then give a one-second penalty for the manoeuvre, relegating him to fourth and promoting Ingram to complete a hat-trick of third places on the day.

While Rowbottom went into freefall down to an eventual 10th place, Jake Hill and Colin Turkington came through to complete an excellent day for the West Surrey Racing squad – following their pair of 1-2 finishes earlier on, they claimed fifth (Hill) and sixth (Turkington) in their BMW 330e M Sports.

A heavy clash at the esses with the Speedworks Toyota of Rory Butcher dropped third WSR BMW contender Stephen Jelley out of the frame, and Butcher went on to take seventh from Adam Morgan’s Ciceley Motorsport BMW.

The last driver to pass Rowbottom, who just fended off the BTC Honda of Josh Cook at the finish, was Ollie Jackson, who moved his Motorbase Ford up to ninth on the last lap.

BTCC Snetterton - Race 3 results

Cla	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval
1	Ashley Sutton	12	23'51.491
2	Jason Plato	12	23'56.047	4.556	4.556
3	Tom Ingram	12	23'58.754	7.263	2.707
4	Ricky Collard	12	23'58.966	7.475	0.212
5	Jake Hill	12	24'00.168	8.677	1.202
6	Colin Turkington	12	24'00.565	9.074	0.397
7	Rory Butcher	12	24'03.585	12.094	3.020
8	Adam Morgan	12	24'03.835	12.344	0.250
9	Ollie Jackson	12	24'06.754	15.263	2.919
10	Daniel Rowbottom	12	24'07.042	15.551	0.288
11	Josh Cook	12	24'07.438	15.947	0.396
12	Daniel Lloyd	12	24'07.857	16.366	0.419
13	George Gamble	12	24'08.403	16.912	0.546
14	Bobby Thompson	12	24'08.847	17.356	0.444
15	Gordon Shedden	12	24'09.306	17.815	0.459
16	Dan Cammish	12	24'10.396	18.905	1.090
17	Aiden Moffat	12	24'11.117	19.626	0.721
18	Michael Crees	12	24'13.712	22.221	2.595
19	Dexter Patterson	12	24'14.181	22.690	0.469
20	Sam Osborne	12	24'16.383	24.892	2.202
21	Stephen Jelley	12	24'19.452	27.961	3.069
22	Aron Taylor-Smith	12	24'25.897	34.406	6.445
23	Jade Edwards	12	24'27.002	35.511	1.105
24	Will Powell	12	25'37.105	1'45.614	1'10.103
	Jack Butel	5	10'13.882	7 Laps	7 Laps
	Ash Hand	4	8'08.263	8 Laps	1 Lap
	Nicolas Hamilton	0
View full results