How Sutton's BTCC steamroller overcame Snetterton challenges

Ash Sutton should go racing with the Vintage Sports-Car Club. First, there’s the verve with which he would throw around an ERA, a chain-driven Frazer Nash or a humble Austin 7. Second, he’d be mighty at clawing through the field in those VSCC handicaps – because that’s exactly what some of his drives in this season’s British Touring Car Championship are.

At both Donington Park’s opening round and Snetterton last weekend, Sutton was a non-finisher in the qualifying race, thereby starting the Sunday trilogies of action from the back of the grid. At each, he carved through to become the winner in race two. In the middle event at Brands Hatch, his handicaps were minimal TOCA Turbo Boost, the hardest compound of slick tyre, and rain. And still there was no stopping him.

Under scorching Snetterton sunshine, four-time champion Sutton and his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium saloon extended the points advantage from 47 to 57 over reigning title holder Tom Ingram. How long before we are writing ‘five-time champion’?

It seems that however much BTCC organiser TOCA tweaks its sporting regulations, Sutton and the Alliance team seem to have an answer. An increase for 2026 in the TOCA Turbo Boost offset for the top drivers in the championship? No problem. Snetterton is the longest track in the BTCC so, theoretically, one second of deployment to the 20 of the unhandicapped (those outside the top seven) should affect things less here than elsewhere. But it’s also in the effect of the deployment: two very long straights at the Norfolk venue do make a big difference.

And there’s also the results of Alliance’s conversion of its old ST hatchback Focuses to saloon shapes for this season – a “good-old Yorkshire cut-and-shut”, in the words of cheery team principal Pete Osborne. Sutton had burst from seventh on the reversed grid for the finale onto the tail of Gordon Shedden’s Speedworks Motorsport-run Laser Tools Toyota Corolla GR Sport, only to find that the canny Scot has lost none of the scintillating racecraft that carried him to three titles with Team Dynamics in the 2010s. Onto Sutton’s tail eventually arrived Ingram with the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback, charging from the back of the grid after alternator failure in race two.

Ingram therefore had the full 10 laps of TTB usage to the one of Sutton. And remember the grumbling throughout the paddock in recent seasons that the Hyundai is a rocketship on the straight? Not anymore.

“The difficulty is, even with a boost advantage I didn’t have any advantage over Ash with the performance that thing has got out of bends,” grumbled Ingram, distraught to have just learnt that his hard-earned third place had been converted to eighth due to a penalty for track-limits offences. “Even with 20 seconds [per lap] of boost, I can’t get past him. He’s pulling five car lengths out of every single hairpin. I pull back half, maybe one in a straight line, so you’re pissing in the wind unfortunately when it comes to racing against them with the engine performance they’ve got low down [torque]. It means that while everyone looks at all the speed traps, that doesn’t tell you how good they are low down. They could start in second gear – that’s all you need to know.”

Ingram endured a tough Snetterton unable to stop Sutton's charge

Photo by: JEP

It’s worth pointing out here that, for 2026, the TOCA technical team, as part of its continuing efforts to retain as much parity as possible between the various engines, trimmed a small amount of turbo boost from each. This dropped the six Hyundais into a different ‘bracket’ of performance, hence they were given a further snip. The Sam Riches-led troop do a fantastic job – you’ll often see saloons, hatchbacks and fastbacks, front and rear-wheel drive, within hundredths. But they’re in the same invidious situation as Premier League football referees such as Michael Oliver or Anthony Taylor: there will be someone complaining.

Depending on where you stand on base boost, it’s ‘turn them down’ or ‘turn us up’. In the latter camp is Adam Morgan. Snetterton was building into a good day for the Plato Racing Mercedes A35 Saloon team. Dan Rowbottom had taken sixths in the first two races; Morgan had beaten him to fifth in the second, had a set of soft tyres from third on the reversed grid. Sure enough, he ran second to Shedden before Sutton came through, but then faded to seventh (sixth after Ingram’s penalty).

“It’s black-and-white on paper,” asserted the amiable but gloomy Lancastrian. “There are performance advantages on other cars, and hopefully they [TOCA] can see that. As a racing driver you hate going backwards, and I didn’t have as much boost, which made it tougher. The chassis does feel nice, but there are certain cars out there that can perform when they don’t have the boost.”

"We’re at an aerodynamic disadvantage compared to the saloons. We can’t do anything about that so we just need to maximise everything that we can on driveability and chassis" Josh Cook

You can also factor in here a feeling among users of the M-Sport-built TOCA customer engine that, as good as that motor is in the mild or South Pole-like conditions that generally prevail in the BTCC, it’s not so strong in a high ambient. That may explain the Plato Mercs missing a slight edge at Snetterton, ditto the Power Maxed Racing Audis. And it makes Shedden’s victory all the more impressive.

Even more so, because the Corolla is now the only hatchback left in the series, and Sutton and his NAPA compadres will tell you how much better life is to have cast off that particular ball-and-chain for 2026. Josh Cook, leading the line for the ‘genuine’ Speedworks effort alongside the sister MB/Laser Tools ensemble of Shedden and Aron Taylor-Smith, looked to be in good shape: second row in qualifying, second in the qualifying race, fourth in race one. But then he went backwards. Such is the shortage of straight-line speed – the team estimated 6mph on the pit straight, 7mph on the back straight – that it’s very hard to race the Corolla in the pack.

“The car’s handling really well,” reflected Cook, “but we’re struggling a bit here. We’re at an aerodynamic disadvantage compared to the saloons. We can’t do anything about that so we just need to maximise everything that we can on driveability and chassis.”

There’s a flipside to every coin, and there must have been much rubbing of hands in the West Surrey Racing trucks as they ferried the BMW 330i M Sports to Snetterton. The rear-wheel-drive cars thrive in the heat because they take less out of their tyres. And, after the adventures of Brands, Charles Rainford and Daryl De Leon – both quick drivers – also had maximum TTB deployment to start the weekend.

Rainford won the qualifying race and duly converted it into Race 1 victory

Photo by: JEP

Rainford did the business in qualifying to plant his 3-Series on the front row for the short Saturday race, although it was Tom Chilton – also on maximum boost – who set the quickest time overall in his Excelr8 Hyundai. The extrovert Surrey veteran was pretty proud of that: “I’m the fastest man around Snetterton with no bloody horsepower. We have a bit of an issue where we can’t control the boost, so we’re fundamentally down on power [from turning down the engine to prevent penalties for overboosting].”

Chilton even beat Rainford’s rear-driven BMW away at the start. “I don’t think my head was screwed on properly – I just got a late reaction to the lights,” chuckled the WSR man, who then battered his way in front at the tight Oggie’s right-hander. Chilton was “extremely upset. He genuinely didn’t bother to take the apex, which pushed me off.” But Rainford, who escaped with a verbal warning, explained that the trigger was contact at the preceding Hamilton left-hander: “He had oversteer that hit me in the back, and he gets on the throttle to save himself which is fine, but that’s put me off. I’ve gone down an extra gear for the next corner but I can’t just stop because I’ve got a car behind me, and I can’t tighten up any more because I’ve got dirty front tyres.”

Chilton’s excursion dropped him to sixth, Sutton bursting between he and team-mate Ingram on the long straight. “Ash managed to drive from behind us, through, past and then cut in before we even got there [to the esses],” explained an incredulous Ingram. “Initially I thought I’d forgotten to press the boost button or something like that.”

Sutton’s Saturday went wrong when the left-front tyre was punctured on debris he reckoned was kicked up at the Williams right-hander by his pal Cook, who joked: “He has told me over some ice cream. Who knows?”

It ended with the Focus sailing off over the grass at Coram, the bumps causing a knock-on glitch with the boost, which had to be fixed for Sutton to do a further lap before the car was retired. “I instantly felt something change in the balance of the car, ran wide, then carried on,” recounted Sutton. “Under the bridge fine, but those next two right-handers I noticed there was a problem, turned into Coram and it started to go down and went bang at the end. It turns out there’s a big hole in the middle of the tyre – something pierced through. I think we went airborne a couple of times, and the front of the car took a bit of a pasting.”

Ingram’s third place therefore shaved into Sutton’s points advantage, but his TTB deficit to Rainford was never going to allow him to challenge the BMW in race one on Sunday, and the cheerful Sussex racer led home a 1-3, with De Leon completing the podium.

From the back of the grid, Sutton was classified 10th in this one, where he used the medium option tyre to make sure he would enjoy softs for the rest of the day. He wasn’t happy with the balance of the Focus, “so we reset, a few more changes and the car came alive from that point on.”

Sutton's sprint from last to 10th in race one set up his latest stunning Sunday recovery

Photo by: JEP

It certainly did. Ingram and the BMWs were compelled by the sporting regulations to use the medium tyres in race two, and Sutton was second behind the Hyundai by half-distance. But Ingram was in trouble: he had been without power-steering since lap four, and had to be Popeye to steer the car. When he locked up under braking for the Wilson hairpin and slid wide, Sutton slipped through, and eventually Ingram retired with alternator failure – the only DNF of the BTCC’s Snetterton Sunday. It happened too at Donington, of course.

“We seem to have a major problem,” muttered Ingram, who added that the alternator jinx has spread throughout Excelr8. “We did two at Donington, two at Brands, one here, Ricky [Collard]’s had one, Nic [Hamilton]’s had one, Tom [Chilton]’s had one. I’ve got a feeling we have a slightly weak component, which is disappointing. But that’s the harsh reality of it.”

Collard continued his excellent comeback season with second place ahead of Chilton, but may rue slowing on the run to the finish line: Sutton had copped a 5s penalty for dropping two wheels over the white line close to the pitwall while simultaneously passing Collard and De Leon. Collard finished 6.009s adrift, converted by the penalty to 1.009s – and had slowed by 1.5s on the final lap…

"They deserve that. He’s the most experienced guy here on that front, isn’t he? He’s a phenomenal driver and he knows how to defend, how to position a car. I gave it everything I had" Ash Sutton on Gordon Shedden

On medium tyres, Collard was going nowhere in the finale. While Shedden performed his miracle in holding off Sutton, De Leon won the BMW battle with Rainford (and the interloping Restart Racing Hyundai of a charging Chris Smiley) for what became third place after Ingram’s penalty.

“Me and Gordon went hell for leather,” grinned Sutton. “I tried to use my one lap [of TTB] as efficiently as possible and try and make the move. It nearly paid off into Turn 1 [Riches], but not quite enough. They deserve that. He’s the most experienced guy here on that front, isn’t he? He’s a phenomenal driver and he knows how to defend, how to position a car. I gave it everything I had.”

The gap at the finish was just 0.728s, and you’d have to say that the VSCC handicapper would be happy with that.

Shedden saw off Sutton in the final race

Photo by: JEP