How sensational Sutton closed in on the BTCC title

Is there anything that Ash Sutton can’t do in the British Touring Car Championship? The latest round at Croft proved that there’s not much. Victory – in damp conditions – on the hard Goodyear tyres, when 19 of his 22 rivals were on soft rubber probably a second per lap quicker, moved the bar yet again on his extraordinary accomplishments during the 2026 season. And then factor in that he was on minimal TOCA Turbo Boost. Sutton, thanks to his sensational handling of his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium, is now odds-on to become the first driver since 1997 to be crowned champion before we even get to the final race weekend.

Here is the BTCC’s equivalent of the Manchester City attacking force. And yes, that even extends to not winning the title last season… Sutton is the touring car version of the audacious creativity and ‘how-on-earth-did-he-do-that?’ chutzpah of Ryan Cherki combined with the perfect timing and marksmanship of Erling Haaland. How can anyone stop him? Well, we’re yet to find the answer.

Such was his advantage in the championship over Tom Ingram as the teams arrived in North Yorkshire that Sutton’s focus through the Saturday qualifying race, and for much of Sunday’s wet opener, was more upon trying to help Alliance team-mate Dan Cammish into the runner-up spot in the points. He eventually took second place in race one, behind Josh Cook and ahead of Ingram, who had won on the road but been penalised down to third due to a tot-up of track-limits infringements. All three would have to go onto the hard ‘option’ tyre for race two. With the track still damp, surely getting heat into that disadvantageous rubber would be difficult. Surely Cammish, Ricky Collard and Daryl De Leon – starting fourth, fifth and sixth on the soft tyres – were in the box seats.

It didn’t turn out that way. A poor start dumped Cammish down to seventh, and Sutton took just half a lap to impose himself over Cook’s Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport. Ingram took his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback past Cook on the fourth lap, and now the Toyota was in that awful position of being the most vulnerable of the hard-tyred cars in the face of attack from the soft hordes. Furthermore, the battle between Ingram and Cook had allowed Sutton to extend a three-second advantage.

De Leon, on feisty form this weekend in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport, had just muscled his way past Collard’s Excelr8 Hyundai to become the leading soft-tyred runner when he picked a fight with Cook into the end-of-lap complex. The contact ended with De Leon spinning his way down the order, and Collard losing time in taking avoiding action. Suddenly Dan Rowbottom found himself in third position in his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon. Collard was behind him, and only Ingram stood between these soft-tyred runners and Sutton.

Rowbottom had been one of several to pull a fast one in the wet opening race. A rule clarification from BTCC organiser TOCA had allowed drivers to go to the grid on hard tyres for race one, then pit at the end of the formation lap to bolt on wet-weather rubber – and that would count as their mandatory usage of the hards in one race. The hoped-for safety car never came, but nevertheless Rowbottom had ended that race in ninth – probably as good as it would have got on hard tyres in the dry. “There was a loophole in the regulations and we decided to exploit it,” explained the bearded Midlander. “I don’t think it’ll be there next year though…”

Now, thanks to the De Leon/Cook/Collard shenanigans, ‘Rowbo’ had an unexpected opportunity to attack for race two victory. “At that point we were going to drive round in sixth and hope for the best reversed-grid spot,” he admitted. “And then I had to go for it!”

Sutton put in a champion's drive to win Race 2

Photo by: JEP

Once Rowbottom had cleared Ingram at the Jim Clark Esses, Collard followed suit at the hairpin, and now the gap was 5.5s to Sutton with eight laps remaining. Theoretically it was possible to catch the leading Focus, but up front Sutton was hammering on. And then came news that both Rowbottom and Collard were among those to have been issued with 5s penalties for track-limits infringements, something that was an intensely tedious recurring theme across the weekend. Even if they caught and passed Sutton, they would not be able to pull out the necessary gap.

They couldn’t catch him anyway. Rowbottom and Collard could lap just 0.5s quicker than Sutton, whose fastest effort remained the quickest of the day on hard tyres, despite the track being completely dry for the finale amid belated and welcome sunshine.

Sutton described himself as being “welled up” in the immediate aftermath concerning the magnitude of his achievement. But he’s not one to sing his own praises – why should he, when everyone else does? “We’re in such a sweet spot on the hard tyres that it kind of negates it a little,” he added.

"In the final sector I felt massively quicker than Ash and I could close in on him loads on the brakes, but even just to be able to hang onto the back, it’s like he’s out for a Sunday afternoon drive" Tom Ingram

Later on, he reflected: “It was pretty special. The biggest thing for me was the car was awesome, we got our head down, treated it a bit like qualifying in some respects. Tom and Josh were the cork in the bottle – they held everyone back, which allowed me to get the gap. Where they were defending, squabbling among themselves, I was able to stretch out a healthy margin. Once the soft cars got through, it gave me a nice buffer to manage.”

So, for the phlegmatic Sutton, it’s all in a day’s work.

Over at Excelr8, things were going very badly for Ingram. All had looked good in qualifying when, on just 3s per lap of TTB, he planted the Hyundai on the second row of the grid for the qualifying race. Cammish, almost as badly handicapped with 5s of TTB, was the only driver quicker than Ingram in their qualifying group. Then along came Cook, on 20s TTB, to take pole from the second batch of runners; Sutton, on 1s TTB, had a time good for the second row deleted due to track limits, so started fifth instead.

Bizarrely, Cammish had been stripped of his front-row time, only to have it reinstated. “I didn’t feel like I’d done anything wrong,” he puzzled, “and they couldn’t give me an answer.” His pace, along with that of Ingram and Sutton, led some to surmise that the TTB did not affect things too much on the Croft layout, but Cammish retorted: “It’s as powerful as ever. What you’re seeing are some well-sorted cars. We can carry a bit of minimum [speed] and that contributes to the lap time.”

With some assistance from Sutton, Cammish strengthened his hold on the runner-up spot in the championship over the Croft weekend

Photo by: JEP

While Sutton played rear gunner to second-placed Cammish in the qualifying race, with Cook up front, Ingram was clinging on in fourth when he ran wide onto the grass at Sunny In. He won’t moan about it publicly, but the reigning champion and his Hyundai comrades do appear to be struggling in some areas this season. “It feels fantastic – it feels really strong,” said Ingram of a car that did indeed look exquisite out on the circuit. “I felt so much quicker than Ash but I was losing a lot out of the hairpin and the slow-speed stuff and I was having to try and offset the difference.

“In the final sector I felt massively quicker than Ash and I could close in on him loads on the brakes, but even just to be able to hang onto the back, it’s like he’s out for a Sunday afternoon drive. But for us I was hustling every single thing on it, and having to do 11 qualifying laps. Even to hang onto him I’ve got to be over the limit and a bit more.”

Ingram’s moment dropped him behind De Leon, and the amiable Anglo-Filipino was uncompromising in successfully defending Ingram’s efforts to retaliate. “Nothing I wouldn’t have done,” shrugged ‘Tingram’ of the last-lap hipcheck.

Then came Ingram’s loss of race one victory to track limits. Cook knew the score and, when he saw the bonnet of the Hyundai flying down his inside into the hairpin with two laps remaining, he was unconcerned. “I didn’t just open the door for Tom, I made it a little bit difficult for him,” mused the West Countryman. “But as soon as he made the lunge it was ‘you crack on’. It turned into a bit of a strategic race.”

To get to Cook, Ingram had needed to clear those Fords. There were numerous episodes of contact with Sutton – all of them just normal touring car stuff – until three and a half laps from home, when a more decisive biff occurred at Tower. “I’ll be honest with you, we were semi-acting as rear gunner to ‘Cammo’, and I had so many hits in the left rear and the right rear,” detailed Sutton of his unscheduled trip onto the grass. “Literally the lap that I went off I had such a big hit in the right rear from Tom, it changed the toe link. It didn’t feel quite right going through the Esses, and as I turned into Barcroft I got a bit of opposite lock going – it basically caught me out.”

Cammish, with his own 5s track-limits penalty, opened the door for the recovering Sutton on the final lap, and the champion-elect even got close enough to Cook at the very last corner of the race to give the Toyota a friendly nudge. “It helped me turn the car!” smiled the victor.

Of his penalty, Ingram grumbled: “I’m fourth car in the train, I can see nothing, wipers are going flat-out, you’re driving on the rainlight of the car ahead.”

Ingram exited Race 3 after contact with Rainford sent him into a violent spin

Photo by: JEP

Both Cook and Ingram fell victim in the greasy second race to contact from cars that ran into them from the slippery inside line. The Toyota was nowhere near as good as Sutton’s Focus on the hard tyres, but Cook had been valiantly defending eighth place for several laps when an overtaking move by Dan Lloyd’s Restart Racing Hyundai into Tower ended in a savage harpooning. Ingram was already out. Cammish was attempting to follow Rowbottom and Collard up the order when he saw a half-chance inside the Hyundai at Sunny In, and the contact sent Ingram onto the wet grass and into the barrier.

Cammish escaped to take fourth place – with a reprimand – and he would earn another in the finale…

While Mikey Doble got away from reversed-grid pole to take his Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon to victory, it all kicked off behind him. To be fair, the chaos at Clervaux looked like six of one, half a dozen of the other. Collard ruthlessly chopped across towards Cammish before they even arrived there, the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman stayed put, but got launched over the apex kerb into the Hyundai, which then spun and collected Sutton, who in turn tagged Rowbottom into a spin. Apart from Rowbottom (who recovered to ninth), they were all effectively out of the running.

"Our luck this weekend was that we didn’t roll" Tom Ingram

But a potentially far worse shunt was to come… Ingram had clawed his way into a massive bust-up on the fringes of the top 10 when he got caught out by a swerve from Charles Rainford’s WSR BMW into the Jim Clark Esses. That sent the Hyundai onto the grass, which whipped it through 180 degrees so it was heading backwards into the inside field – where Bobby Thompson cartwheeled an Audi to destruction six years ago.

“Our luck this weekend was that we didn’t roll,” reasoned Ingram. “It’s a weird thing, but in times of danger and jeopardy I’m thinking of Bobby Thompson! It could have been an absolutely cataclysmic shunt that, so I’m kind of pleased it wasn’t. But I feel a bit low…”

And Sutton? He lost three laps while the Focus was rejigged in the pits, rejoined to snatch the fastest lap point, and parked it. Is there anything this guy can’t do?

Sutton is poised to seal the 2026 title at the penultimate round at Silverstone

Photo by: JEP