How Sutton scorched rivals to extend BTCC lead at Thruxton

“Two seconds and a first – can’t complain too much,” grinned Ash Sutton after the British Touring Car Championship’s return at Thruxton following its seven-week summer break.

Indeed he can’t. At the wheel of his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium, the four-time champion stretched his lead over 2025 BTCC king Tom Ingram from 48 points out to 59. As ever seems to be the case where Sutton and engineer Antonio Carrozza are concerned, it was a case of weekend set-up tinkering that finally unleashed explosive pace where it really mattered. As seems to be the pattern for Ingram and his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback this season, things were pretty up and down.

“We’ve been noisy this weekend, which we didn’t really want to be,” Ingram summarised. “I’ve had issues in every single race I think, various dramas or my own cock-ups. It’s been a fairly trying weekend.”

One of these hitches converted second place to fifth in a race two won by Sutton; the other resulted in a penalty in the finale for a starting infringement. But such was the pace unlocked by Ingram and engineer Spencer Aldridge – and a surfeit of TOCA Turbo Boost over the pursuing Sutton – that he had wiped out the five seconds with which he’d been pinged with a lap still remaining.

Like Sutton, Ingram was delighted with what he had to work with after not finding the Hyundai to his liking on Saturday morning: “We ended up with a car that felt like probably the best car I’ve ever had at Thruxton. From where we started the weekend to where we finished, I think we’ve made good progress.”

But as ever in the BTCC, there were numerous twists and turns in the narrative. To start with, the whole of the field was overshadowed by Josh Cook and his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport through Saturday and Sunday’s opening race. OK, Cook is the acknowledged ‘King of Thruxton’ – 10 wins at the Hampshire speedbowl coming into the weekend – and he had 20 seconds per lap of TTB to the one of Sutton and three of Ingram. But the short-wheelbase hatchback Corolla should, in theory, be the car worst suited to the 2.356 miles of high-speed corners.

The 'King of Thruxton' picked up more wins at the Hampshire speedbowl in the qualifying race and Sunday's opener

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“The car’s dancing around round here a lot,” related Cook. “But that’s the nature of the circuit. It’s high risk, but if you get it right you can get a big reward.”

Ingram and Sutton didn’t, but the reigning champion caught a hugely lucky break in qualifying. Sutton was in what to all intents and purposes was a World Cup ‘Group of Death’, while Ingram, Argentina-style, had it much easier. The result? Ingram was just 0.016s quicker than Sutton’s lap time, but he would start alongside Cook on the front row, with the Ford man – also outpaced by team-mate Dan Cammish and Adam Morgan’s Plato Racing Mercedes – back in seventh.

Each of the championship top two had their troubles on a day when BTCC tyre supplier Goodyear offered up its medium compound for qualifying only on a circuit where all the running over recent years has been done on the hard.

Sutton’s chiselling of an opening on the inside of Goodwood meant Ingram was caught on the outside line, and got hugely hung out to dry as the Alliance Fords of Cammish and Senna Proctor came through

Sutton never ran the medium in free practice, “and just lost what we had on the car. We did a 15.7 in free practice, then put the medium tyre on, and we’ve seen the big jump in pace that everyone else has, six or seventh tenths, and we went no quicker.” Ingram, meanwhile, was nonplussed after free practice before things went the right way later on: “We’ve changed a lot on the car between practice and quali. We generally didn’t have a nice balance – low grip. Nothing really worked.”

Cook? Like Sutton and Ingram, he never ran the medium tyre in free practice, yet set comfortably the fastest time of the weekend on his second flying lap on that compound in qualifying…

While the Toyota’s lack of straightline speed makes it difficult to race in the pack, it’s a decent weapon when it’s out front, especially with a surfeit of TTB. Cook was never really threatened in the qualifying race as he headed home Ingram, with Sutton rising to third – that was despite the set-up from qualifying being locked in for the half-points race. “We 100% made the best of a bad situation there,” he reckoned.

The Toyota's short wheelbase disadvantage at Thruxton was partly cancelled out by Cook's healthy allowance of TTB

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Cook still had the maximum TTB for Sunday’s race one – 10 laps to the two of Ingram and one of Sutton. So it was a similar story. But here was where things started to unravel for the Hyundai man. Sutton’s chiselling of an opening on the inside of Goodwood meant Ingram was caught on the outside line, and got hugely hung out to dry as the Alliance Fords of Cammish and Senna Proctor (stepping in for the unwell Sam Osborne for his first BTCC outing since last October) came through. The Hyundai squirrelled onto the grass and wobbled down to ninth place, while Dan Rowbottom suddenly got a massive run on everyone to cruise his Plato Racing Mercedes A35 Saloon into third place, behind Cook and Sutton.

Ingram recovered to fifth by the end of the race, while up front Sutton didn’t quite have enough for Cook. Obviously, the Toyota had the boost advantage. “Yeah he did,” admitted Sutton, “and he had some good pace. But even when he wasn’t boosting he was strong. He showed that in race two and hung in there. We didn’t really have an answer for Josh in the first one. The car maybe wasn’t 100% perfect, which was what we evolved in race two.”

Behind the leading duo and ahead of Ingram were two happy chaps: Rowbottom, breaking the Plato team’s podium duck for full-points Sunday races; and Proctor, doing a properly solid job on his unexpected opportunity. The big Yorkshireman has been Alliance’s reserve this season, and did do a day of testing pre-season before settling into an advisory role to Osborne. But, as he laughed on Saturday, he found out he was driving “early this morning. My alarm went off and I had the message!”

For race two, now down to just one lap of TTB, Cook was always going to struggle to keep the Toyota at the front. But he gave it his best shot. Sutton now had a car he was really happy with, and got the cutback out of Church Corner on the opening lap to sail into the lead. But then a mystery mid-race imbalance set in, and Cook closed back onto his tail.

Sutton believed he had a puncture, but by the end of the race suspected it might have been fluid dropped on the circuit. “I nearly boxed, but you never box until it’s actually exploded!” he quipped.

Once Sutton was comfortable, Cook now had to turn his attentions to his mirrors. Ingram got on the TTB and drew to his outside at the chicane. There was slight contact, and, while Cook lost time with a half-spin, Ingram made the decision to bypass the chicane entirely – not the first time he’s done that at Thruxton.

Ingram copped a penalty for skipping the chicane after a battle with Cook

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Ingram claimed “I did what I had to do, yielded any time gained back to Ash so there was no issue with that.” His speed-trap figure across the following start-finish line was 104.6mph, 1.9mph below his fastest. With a lap to go came news that he was hit with a 10s track-limits penalty, relegating him to fifth.

“I think I got done for track limits at the exit of Church, which is a fairly shit corner to get a track limit penalty at because you’re kind of committed fairly early on,” grumbled Ingram. “That was one of those. The incident with Josh, I think he was fairly honest – he saw it exactly as I did, as a racing incident. I jumped the chicane; I had no option but to jump the chicane really. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people saying it’s a typical Tom Ingram move and he always jumps or cuts the chicane, but circumstantial again.”

Sutton was one of those people. “It wouldn’t be a year at Thruxton for him if he didn’t do that!” he chortled.

"When Spencer [Aldridge] said, ‘You need to try and get five seconds’ – Jesus, over Ash as well – it’s going to be fairly hard. I think Spencer was lying to me for the last lap of the race, saying the gap was different to what it actually was" Tom Ingram

It wasn’t Cook who moved up into second in the final results. His delay in the shenanigans with Ingram had left him vulnerable to Cammish, and he was given a one-place penalty for his own chicane corner-cutting while defending. Second was a good result for the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman, who had put in his customary strong qualifying performance but faded to seventh in Sunday’s opener.

“We went the wrong way on set-up overnight and plummeted in race one,” sighed Cammish. “We were totally out of the window – oversteer and trying to kill me on the way in, terrible traction out. What a difference a race makes. We had good fun, me and Josh. I thought I had him but he’s a wily fox. It’s good to have a proper touring car race.”

That was effectively Cook’s signing-off point from being a force over the Thruxton weekend, a whack from Morgan at the chicane in race three sending him hurtling into Speedworks stablemate Aron Taylor-Smith and triggering the BTCC weekend’s only safety car.

Cammish had a low-key Thruxton but only conceded a handful of points to Ingram

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James Dorlin, impressive all event and sixth in race two, was on reversed-grid pole in his Restart Racing Hyundai but knew he didn’t realistically have the pace. This was especially apparent on the exit to Church, where he leaked positions before finishing sixth.

Ironically, Ingram’s race two penalty had plonked him on the front row in the starting line-up with a handy five laps of TTB. He needed them. Sutton had faced an investigation into his start in race two, before walking out a free man: “It turns out it was purely just the movement on when you load the car up, with the nose of the car coming up and where it squats at the rear. That’s what they saw. There was a movement, but it wasn’t a movement backwards or forwards – it was the pitch of the car.”

Ingram wasn’t so lucky in race three. He got past Dorlin at the Complex, but knew from an early stage that he would have to pull out the likely 5s he would need should he be penalised post-race, which he was: “When Spencer [Aldridge] said, ‘You need to try and get five seconds’ – Jesus, over Ash as well – it’s going to be fairly hard. I think Spencer was lying to me for the last lap of the race, saying the gap was different to what it actually was – I think he was trying to make me push all the way to the end.” He was, but it worked – to the tune of 0.663s.

Similarly, Sutton had Carrozza on the blower to stay within range: “Yeah it was very much so.” But with only one lap of TTB he was on to a loser. “I’m really happy either way with what we’ve achieved over the weekend, with the points haul that we’ve got, and how we’ve chipped away at extending the championship gap,” he purred. “We just maybe didn’t maximise qualifying from our side in terms of car balance, but over the course of the race day it’s been absolutely phenomenal.”

Cammish too was on the podium again, in his case holding off a late surge from Ricky Collard, who had a catch-up Sunday in his Excelr8 Hyundai after alternator failure in the qualifying race. Cammish is only 17 points behind Ingram, and well ahead of the rest. And at this rate, we may be focusing on the battle for the title runner-up spot rather than who will be the champion. It looks increasingly like a record-breaking fifth for Sutton.

Sutton has nearly three race wins' worth of points over Ingram

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