How a top-down overhaul formed the basis of Sutton's 2023 BTCC dominance

“Coming off the back of Donington was when I felt we were in a really good place. The car, me mentally, the team were fully behind me, NAPA were fully behind me. That was kind of the point where I thought, ‘Right, this is mine to lose. I just need to really focus on keeping out of trouble, keeping my nut down and doing the best job I can.’”

The words are Ash Sutton’s, while pondering when he thought he might be looking in a strong position to win his fourth British Touring Car Championship title. And the cynics among you may think he’s referring to Donington round one, way back in April, when he exhibited scarily quick pace in the much-reworked Ford Focus ST. The NAPA-clad Motorbase Performance crew had presented Sutton and his team-mates with absolute weapons, and it was only the first of three what we might call ‘early-race missteps’ of the 2023 season that prevented him leaving the Leicestershire parkland circuit with the championship lead.

But Sutton is actually alluding to Donington round eight, in late August. And here is where the irony creeps in: yes, he scored a pole position, a win and a second as the Grand Prix loop appeared on the BTCC calendar for the first time since 2002, but it was one of the places where that scarily quick pace looked less in evidence than at most venues. And, whisper it, he was even overtaken on genuine pace for the lead – and victory – by a rival in the form of reigning champion Tom Ingram and his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback.

Excelr8, of course, hadn’t been standing still over the winter either, and a package of refinements to the Hyundai had left Ingram in confident mood of repeating his 2022 title. But the Suffolk team, not to mention everyone else on the grid, was left shattered by the huge performance leap of those Focuses. Ingram knuckled down to the task in hand of accumulating what he amusingly refers to as ‘pointsy’ weekends, and it was this application – plus Sutton’s other two ‘early-race missteps’ at the mid-season Oulton Park and Croft rounds – that kept him in the hunt.

At Donington GP, Ingram felt that the regular 2023 pattern of missing a couple of tenths to Sutton had been reversed; the Hyundai was as quick as the Ford overall. And when he beat Sutton to the chequered flag in race two, Ingram had cut the gap to 40 points with seven races still remaining. If another Sutton misstep happened…

Yet here was where that intangible yet significant phenomenon occurred: what is commonly referred to as champion’s luck. Sutton had again been overtaken by Ingram in the early going of the reversed-grid race, and they were running around in 10th and 11th positions when suddenly mayhem broke out thanks to the sister Ford of Dan Rowbottom hitting a chicane tyre stack.

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The 2023 BTCC title balance swung towards Sutton at August's Donington Park round

The chain-reaction knock-on effects of this resulted in Sutton suddenly gaining five places in half a lap on Rowbottom, Jake Hill, Colin Turkington, Tom Ingram and Tom Chilton – all race winners in 2023 – without genuinely overtaking of them. That was the kind of episode from which we might normally expect the canny Ingram to benefit, but now he faced a 42-point deficit, with six races remaining…

And at Silverstone, there was indeed another misstep from Sutton, but this was only because his team – operating for its last weekend as Motorbase before its renaming as Alliance Racing in time for the Brands Hatch finale – was shadowing the strategy of Ingram, the perceived only rival for the title. Like so many other race weekends, this one was heavily affected by rain, and a shower before the start of race one threw the grid into disarray.

Ingram took the start on slicks; Sutton said he knew this was the wrong choice, but that the security of emulating his opponent was paramount. They slid down the field and, when Ingram was clobbered into a spin at Becketts, he called it quits and went for wet-weather Goodyears; Sutton and his crew saw Excelr8 getting ready, and called their own man in. Wrong choice again, because from shortly after this point the slicks had become the quicker tyre…

“This is now the third car I’ve won a British Touring Car Championship in; there’s not many drivers can say they’ve done that, and that’s a massive thanks to that man” Ash Sutton on engineer Antonio Carrozza

They both finished a lap down; the gap was still 42 points with only five races remaining, but now Hill had leapfrogged Ingram to become Sutton’s closest rival. And his 330e M Sport, fresh from its win on the correct tyres in race one, was starting the sequel from pole, with Ingram 22nd and Sutton 23rd. “Whoa, we maybe overlooked that one,” acknowledged a worried Sutton.

And then along came more champion’s luck. Sutton’s drive from 23rd on the grid to victory in that second race is rightly hailed as that of a maestro, one of the greatest performances in BTCC history from one of the greatest drivers in BTCC history, yet there were three other drivers who should have won.

Hill was on course for another victory, and to trim the gap to Sutton to 30-odd points, when a misfire caused by a boost sensor failure seriously hobbled his BMW just after a mid-race safety car. He’d had the race completely under control, keeping that hope of a maiden BTCC title just within his grasp, and now it had been ripped away.

Ingram had been running ahead of Sutton on the opening lap when he was collateral damage to an outbreak of intra-Team Hard Cupra Leon chaos, got shoved wide and lost several places. His own recovery drive to third was outstanding – his pace matched that of Sutton, who arguably would never have passed the Hyundai, especially given his need to preserve points.

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Both Ingram and Hill put up title challenges but neither could push Sutton close once he built up a healthy points lead

And Aron Taylor-Smith, seeking a first win since the 2019 finale for the plucky Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra squad, had enough of an advantage over Sutton before the safety car to suggest that he wouldn’t have been caught by the Ford. While Hill was devastated and Ingram was rueful, the cheery Dubliner was just delighted to have been running up at the front before succumbing to the inevitable Sutton move into Copse Corner on the final lap.

Even so, Sutton rightly hails it as the showpiece of his extraordinary 12 race wins of 2023, “especially when you think all the odds are against you in terms of Jake winning race one, should have really won race two if he didn’t have his issue. So to storm through when it looks like it’s not looking too good and take the win was something special. That’s one I will remember for a long, long time.”

And from here, the title was a formality. Sutton went to the Brands GP finale 45 points clear of Ingram, the two raced off way ahead of the field in the opener, and at the chequered flag it was all done and dusted. Twelve months earlier, he’d emerged from the Focus at the Brands finale, delighted that he’d likely never have to drive the finicky beast again as Motorbase evaluated a rear-wheel-drive Audi project.

When that decision was reversed, Sutton’s engineer sidekick Antonio Carrozza was tasked with turning the Focus into something good. Apart from the mechanical work – even bolts were changed – there was aerodynamic re-homologation of most of the panels on the car. Under the bonnet, long-time Focus engine supplier Mountune produced new camshafts.

So too did Swindon for the Hyundais and M-Sport for the Power Maxed and Hard customer teams, but theirs meant a slight boost reduction at the hands of the TOCA technical team. Mountune, meanwhile, had focused upon driveability rather than power, and kept everything within TOCA’s performance parameters to be unaffected on boost. Just another illustration of how this team had every box ticked.

Carrozza has now been with Sutton for all four of his titles, albeit as a data engineer when he won the 2017 crown with the BMR Subaru under the technical leadership of Carl Faux, who subsequently went to work in Supercars in Australia.

“It is something special,” acknowledges Sutton of the working relationship with Carrozza. “Together, I’d like to think we’ve got our peace and harmony in terms of what we can do with any car on the grid. This is now the third car I’ve won a British Touring Car Championship in [it was the Infiniti Q50 in 2020 and 2021]; there’s not many drivers can say they’ve done that, and that’s a massive thanks to that man.

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Sutton sealed the title with victory in the opening race of the Brands finale

“He was very new to it [in the Subaru days]. He’d come in from Xtrac [the BTCC’s control gearbox supplier] and just soaked up every bit of information he could. The last thing Carl said to me when he left to go to Oz was, ‘He’s the boy you need’. So I took his advice and look what we’ve gone and done together.”

Further, the revamped cars of Sutton, Dan Cammish, Rowbottom and Sam Osborne were out testing early, each driver getting several days each. Which meant that, amid the desperately poor British spring, they actually managed to find some dry-weather running.

Other teams, wherever they went, found that rain or even snow put paid to any meaningful testing. Incredibly, such was the climate this year that, by the end of the rain-affected opening round at Donington, the BTCC’s long-time tyre supplier Goodyear had provided more sets of wet-weather rubber than during the whole of 2022.

Such was the preparation of the NAPA-liveried Ford boys that this will have only widened their advantage. Early in the season, rival teams simply hadn’t honed their packages.

Ingram took just two wins, one of those when he went on a different tyre strategy to the rest over the ‘use all three compounds in a day’ round at Snetterton. There was certainly nothing wrong with the Hyundai, but the work done on those Fords means that the development race has ratcheted up

“What the guys have done with the car has kind of worked… not to my favour, but into what I like from a car,” explains Sutton. “I want a car I can rely on, and make it nice and nervous and loose, but I’ve also developed my driving style to suit that car. The car hasn’t just been an easy thing to drive; I’ve had to tailor myself to suit that, so the combined elements of the car and myself and what the guys have given me has been the key to all of that.

“We didn’t open the toolbox and go, ‘Oh there it is, we’ve got that’. We opened every single drawer and lifted out every single tool in it and found all the little bits, and every one of them adds up, and if you know what they are you know how to utilise them on track. And that’s what I have with the engineers here, especially Antonio – he’s been phenomenal, just dialling it in, making sure I know exactly what that car’s capable of doing, and I go and extract it from it.”

As with Sutton and Carrozza, it’s the same with Ingram and his long-time cohort Spencer Aldridge. While Sutton’s style is spectacular, Ingram’s also belies that he’s lugging around a heavy front-wheel-drive beast, so late on the brakes, pretty much drifting into tight corners with pinpoint accuracy on the apex, letting the rear dance around.

They were both brilliant to watch this year, yet Ingram took just two wins, one of those when he went on a different tyre strategy to the rest over the ‘use all three compounds in a day’ round at Snetterton. There was certainly nothing wrong with the Hyundai, but the work done on those Fords means that the development race has ratcheted up for this coming winter.

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Ingram picked up just two wins all season as he had to rely on 'pointsy' accumulation for his title tilt

The WSR squad with its long-serving BMW 3 Series, now the only rear-wheel-drive car in the BTCC, knows this too. Bearing in mind the performance of the Focus, it is understood that some of the brains trust at Sunbury were looking into a front-wheel-drive 2 Series, before opting to refine what they have while the current NGTC ruleset plays out its remaining years. Like Sutton and Ingram, its two top drivers, Hill and Turkington, have long alliances with their respective engineers Craig Porley and John Waterman. But there is a feeling of hands being tied behind backs.

It dates back to the debut season of the 3 Series in 2019, when the car dominated out of the blocks and had its boost cut, something that has not been reversed. Hill and Turkington, together with team-mates Adam Morgan and Stephen Jelley, complained of lack of straightline performance in 2023, and theories flew around that somehow the BMW engine was running at increased charge temperatures, with consequent loss of power.

Waterman – the Stirling Moss of BTCC engineers; somehow he’s never run a driver to the title! – disputes this, arguing that “where we modified the intake it’s better in traffic. Our problem is we’ve got the wrong boost after they took it away from us in 2019. We looked good at Silverstone, but that’s a short circuit and we were getting tows off everyone. We’ve got to do some engine development; they’re looking at different things on the power curve. And then we’ve got to hope we’re not too quick and they turn us down again!”

Somehow, Josh Cook ended up fifth in the points – albeit far adrift of fourth-placed Turkington – amid a frustrating season at One Motorsport. The Brackley squad, formerly known as BTC Racing, took over the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type Rs when that team pulled out not long before the start of the season, to replace its older Dynamics-built Civics. It also inherited the Dynamics engine deal for bespoke Neil Brown Engineering-built Honda powerplants. But its form puzzlingly fluctuated.

At Thruxton, Cook’s free practice time on Saturday morning was never bettered by anyone all weekend – and he was 0.3s off that when it counted in qualifying. At the Brands finale, he topped a free practice session, but he and unrelated engineer Mick Cook couldn’t get the car to work on new, soft rubber when the grid was being set. Mid-season, he spoke of the old car being so predictable that “it was like a pair of old slippers”. This one was a different beast. It didn’t help that the team had done “no testing since the start of the season. We haven’t done a shakedown, we haven’t done anything.”

The other team to get drivers – two of them – into the championship top 10 was Speedworks Motorsport with its Toyota Corolla GR Sport. Like the BMWs and Hondas, the Cheshire operation now had bespoke engines from NBE, but they were heavier than the customer M-Sport engines they replaced, affecting the weight distribution, and the first tests didn’t come until the eve of the season.

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A top-five finish in the overall standings and top independent made for good reward for Cook

Early-season form was a disappointment, and it was Ricky Collard who stepped forward with some often highly entertaining performances – on and off-track! – to lead the line. The Toyota engine shares a fair amount of its architecture with the BMW, but there are also significant differences and it has to be mounted transversely in the Corolla, whereas it’s longitudinal in the 3 Series.

A mid-season allowance of 20 millibars’ extra boost from TOCA can’t have done any harm, and generally improved all-round form seemed to particularly help Rory Butcher, who also had a mid-season change of engineer. “It took me until the summer break to regroup,” the Scot admitted of a second half that included a reversed-grid Donington win and a front row at the Brands finale. In the third car, George Gamble showed pace in his first season of front-wheel drive, but it was usually too early (in free practice) or too late (in midfield race scrums), and he would overdrive it in qualifying.

Butcher’s Donington win should have gone to Dan Lloyd, only for a driveshaft failure to heartbreakingly pitch him off the road on the final lap. He and Bobby Thompson – engineered by ex-Dynamics men Tom Hunt and Barry Plowman respectively, and with Matt Neal helping out – were the standouts in the large Team Hard Cupra camp, Thompson putting in some eye-opening performances when he wasn’t sidelined by the team’s budgetary situation.

"The car hasn’t just been an easy thing to drive; I’ve had to tailor myself to suit that, so the combined elements of the car and myself and what the guys have given me has been the key to all of that" Ash Sutton

Over at the Power Maxed Vauxhall camp, there was often nothing to choose between veteran Taylor-Smith and rookies Andrew Watson and Mikey Doble. Watson and Doble were involved in a five-way Jack Sears Trophy title scrap with Ronan Pearson (another impressive newcomer with the Excelr8 Hyundai team), Sam Osborne in his Motorbase/Alliance Ford and Hard Cupra man Dexter Patterson. Watson deservedly won it, but it was Doble who provided the shock of the season with his Silverstone pole.

Incredibly, it was the only time all season a Ford didn’t top qualifying. When you look at it, was there ever a time when Sutton wasn’t “in a really good place”?

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Sutton was a worthy 2023 BTCC champion - can he defend the crown next year?