How superb Sutton sealed the BTCC crown ‘his way’

To claim a record-breaking fifth British Touring Car Championship title by finishing a race in 11th position simply wouldn’t do. It’s not particularly exciting, and it’s not the Ash Sutton way. Notwithstanding the fact that even to be in 11th place was a great performance, bearing in mind the huge effect of his TOCA Turbo Boost deficit on the Silverstone National Circuit, he is renowned and admired for being the master of the blitz through the field, the perception that making the impossible possible is something he routinely does.

So here Sutton was in race one at Silverstone, running in the midfield, riding as tailgunner to Dan Cammish, his team-mate in the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium squad, who in recent weeks he has been attempting to help secure second place in the points. Cammish also had an extremely distant mathematical shot at depriving Sutton of a title everyone knew was already realistically his. Entering the weekend, the only other ‘contender’ was Tom Ingram, but the reigning champion’s dimmest of title hopes had finally fizzled out when his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback was knocked into a spin on lap two at the Brooklands left-hander by Sutton, who in turn had been clipped by Aron Taylor-Smith as they bundled into the braking zone three-wide.

Twelfth or 13th (Chris Smiley’s Restart Racing Hyundai was also running with Cammish and Sutton) would at least keep the title flickering until race two – when Sutton could bolt on the soft tyres with a full complement of 14 laps of TTB, have some fun and claim his crown. But then calamity.

“It was a shame wasn’t it, that?” pondered Cammish, who’d had to dive for the pits and was on barely any more TTB than Sutton. “I did a good job, managed the situation well, medium tyre, little boost, I had a team-mate wingman who was helping me. And then obviously the boost sensor failed. It was a double whammy: I had no boost and I was getting hit up the arse by Ash because the engine’s not picking up quickly enough, and then I’m going to get done anyway.”

The problem was, Cammish was overboosting – even when in ‘payback’ mode. Rather than getting excluded, better to call in, have a solenoid replaced, and rejoin two laps down. And while this was going on, Sutton had passed Smiley…

He redressed the situation with a lap to run, the Northern Irishman getting back ahead as Sutton backed off through Woodcote. “Yeah, yeah, in some respects,” sighed Sutton semi-guiltily when asked whether he’d simply handed Smiley the position. “We spoke openly between the team that we wanted to try and do it [win the title] in a style that fitted, if that makes sense. There’s been a lot of times where I’ve had to hold back in scenarios over the years, and it was nice to actually go about winning the championship in race two with the soft tyre, full deployment, and the reins let loose. The only time he [engineer Antonio Carrozza] had to come over the radio and calm me down was when track limits started becoming a problem. Up to that point it was ‘away you go’.”

Sutton backs off behind Smiley to ensure he doesn't clinch the title in race one

Photo by: JEP

Did Sutton need the full 22 laps of race two to make it to the front? Of course not. It was as soon as the start of lap nine when he got down the inside of Daryl De Leon’s West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport to take the lead. Then he sailed off into the distance to put the championship beyond reach of anyone else.

“The race wins [nine of them in full-points Sunday races this season] have been exceptional, the podiums [19 in total by the end of Sunday], the results,” grinned Sutton. “But I wanted to do it in the Ash style. It was well worth it.”

Sutton, Cammish and Ingram could be no more than bit-part players up until that second race. With a respective one, three and five seconds per lap of TTB through Saturday, to the 20 of those unencumbered by restrictions, it was impossible to be in the mix, given the 56s lap of the Silverstone National Circuit and its preponderance of long, flat-out running. Sutton qualified 17th of the 23 runners, but such was his handicap that he considered it “one of my better laps for sure. We’re six tenths away from a pole lap when there’s a nine tenths [boost] deficit.”

"I’ve always been quick at Silverstone, and have an ability to make a difference around here. The car’s pretty good" Mikey Doble

Another vital part of the Sutton make-up is his ability to minimise the loss from setbacks. In this case, the qualifying race had only just begun when he moved across on the exit of Copse Corner to block off Gordon Shedden, but the three-time champion wasn’t budging and the contact knocked the Ford into a spin. Somehow, Sutton kept the car in a straight line – while going backwards along the grass at an estimated 90mph. “Entertaining, eye-opening,” he laughed. “Luckily I got to the clutch, managed to do a J-turn and carry on.” He got to the finish in 14th, one spot ahead of Cammish – but there was no point swapping positions in favour of the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman because both were on course to claim one point.

Up until the end of Sunday’s race one, those at the front were almost all runners with no TTB restrictions. It was little surprise that Mikey Doble, always strong at Silverstone, qualified his Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon on pole and won the Saturday race. “It’s what I do, isn’t it?” he shrugged. “I’ve always been quick at Silverstone, and have an ability to make a difference around here. The car’s pretty good.” The dip in ambient temperature since the mid-season heatwave also had a beneficial effect on the Audis, whose cooling runs better in colder conditions and which use the M-Sport-built TOCA engine, renowned for giving better performance relative to the opposition when it begins to get a bit parky.

De Leon, who had done a fantastic job to top the other qualifying group in a late recovery after shredding the left-rear tyre – an unfortunate kerbstrike was thought to be to blame – looked good for second. But then, coinciding almost precisely with team-mate Charles Rainford’s WSR BMW dropping back two positions from fifth, De Leon fell to fourth. Both were mysteriously out of TTB, something the team ascribed to a software glitch.

The weekend didn't start smoothly for Sutton as he goes off after contact during the qualifying race

Photo by: JEP

Up into second and third came Aiden Moffat, completing a PMR Audi 1-2, and Excelr8 man Tom Chilton, who had elected to run the TOCA engine in place of the usual bespoke Hyundai powerplant for this weekend and the Brands Hatch finale, after a string of alternator failures throughout the season.

Moffat now had a front-row start for Sunday’s opener, and Doble’s getaways are, by his own admission, sometimes wanting. So it was the Scot who led the field at the start, and was still in front at the end of the 22 laps, when the winner was announced as… Doble.

Moffat had already collected his final warning on track limits when, with a few laps remaining, he happened across the meandering Excelr8 Hyundai of BTCC debutant Osamu Kawashima, against whom the usual backmarkers looked like superstars of the calibre of Alain Menu or Rickard Rydell (or, indeed, Ash Sutton).

“I did a lot of track limits because it was damp [there was mild drizzle at the start], and I never ran wide again,” explained Moffat. “I was very conservative, losing time through Turn 1 [Copse]. He [Kawashima] ran wide into the corner and your eyes are fixated on that car and where it’s going. He started going right but only a car width, but then he’s come back left and braked, and after that I went right. It was one of those hairy moments and that’s what we were done for track limits for.”

A five-second penalty was announced, and now Doble decided not to fight Moffat, for the sake of minimal time and position loss for his team-mate. Doble used TTB on the final lap and they flashed across the line separated by 0.092s. And, roughly an hour later, common sense prevailed and the penalty was rescinded. On balance Moffat deserved the win, but could Doble have attacked for the victory? We’ll never know. Another race ruined by the track-limits plague. Surely there is scope for an observer to radio in and say, ‘Don’t count that as a track-limits strike – he had no other option to avoid a crash.’

Chilton continued his good weekend with another third, followed by Josh Cook, whose Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport had looked good except in qualifying. The West Countryman had a TTB restriction, in his case 15s per lap, but was making light of that, only to qualify on the sixth row: “I can’t say we’ve definitely identified it, but it seems like it was a carryover tyre we had on the back, which made the car borderline undriveable. After that we were back on the money.”

After a track-limits penalty saga, Moffat won, then lost, then won back race one from Doble

Photo by: JEP

What did raise eyebrows was Cook not starting the second race on soft tyres from fourth on the grid, when the top three from the opener were compelled to run mediums. The reasoning was that, with a heavier TTB handicap than before, and the Corolla especially vulnerable when it lacks boost, it was better to try and keep in the reversed-grid mix on mediums and then run softs for the finale. By taking 10th position he missed out by one place, although it should be pointed out that a nerf from Adam Morgan’s CPRL Mercedes on the second lap was a big setback. And then it rained for the finale anyway…

As Sutton charged up the order in race two, Moffat led the first few laps on medium tyres, before De Leon’s (on softs) turn at the front, with the Anglo-Filipino later conceding places to Morgan and the sister BMW of Charles Rainford. Moffat faded to ninth, one spot behind the best of the cars on medium rubber: Ingram’s Hyundai.

These two were drawn on the front row of the reversed grid, which assembled in steady rain with the whole field on wet-weather tyres, and at last Ingram had a chance to turn the tide on his dismal luck of 2026, with full TTB. The Hyundai struggled early doors against three M-Sport-powered cars – Moffat, Dan Rowbottom’s CPRL Mercedes, and Aron Taylor-Smith’s Speedworks Toyota – but Ingram passed Moffat for the lead on the 12th lap and was never headed again.

“I had to bide my time with the M-Sport cars – they were a lot faster than us,” mused Ingram. “I got bundled out and got caught up in a bit of drama. In that sense we were playing catch-up and had to admit defeat [at first] to a certain degree. It’s difficult, but we had to be fairly sensible and grown-up about that race and let it come back to us.”

"For the heavens to open, that kind of negates that, and allows the driving ability shall we say to shine a little bit more, and we were able to charge through" Ash Sutton

Apart from Moffat, Rowbottom also had a spell in front before the Merc wilted due to going the wrong way on set-up. And, while Moffat fended off fellow Scot Shedden’s Speedworks Toyota for third, Sutton serenely sailed up to second. He didn’t have the TTB to challenge Ingram, but the deteriorating conditions had helped mitigate his boost offset.

“The heavens opened, which was a perfect scenario for us,” explained the new champion. “Going from ninth with no deployment would have been a headache – we saw how painful it’s been throughout the weekend. For the heavens to open, that kind of negates that, and allows the driving ability shall we say to shine a little bit more, and we were able to charge through. When I got up to second, Tony [Carrozza] came over the radio and said, ‘Tom’s got 11 laps [TTB], you’ve got three’, and I thought, ‘I’m fighting a losing battle there.’ But to round it out with a second was perfect.”

Indeed, because there are some miracles that are beyond even Sutton.

Record-breaking Sutton celebrates taking his fifth BTCC title with four races to spare

Photo by: JEP