How Sutton and Ingram asserted their dominance in manic BTCC Thruxton weekend

Collisions. Controversy. Penalties. The referee waving play on and no penalties. And, as the constant we can rely on in the same way as death, taxes or people moaning about how quick Hyundais are on the straights, the displays of superiority from Tom Ingram and Ash Sutton. 

Amid the frantic goings-on over the British Touring Car Championship weekend at Thruxton – much of them involving Ingram and Sutton themselves – they took a win apiece and hauled themselves further clear of the pack in what is looking increasingly like a two-man fight for the 2025 title. 

Ingram finally broke his season duck by taking his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback to victory in the first race, and followed that up with two seconds to emerge from the Hampshire speedbowl as the weekend’s top scorer. But he could still only trim the points deficit to Sutton from 15 to nine.

“That seems absolutely bonkers really,” mused 2022 champion Ingram in the Excelr8 truck at the end of the day. That’s especially the case in light of Sutton’s day, where he was hobbled in the first race by the most bizarre of misfortunes, and in the finale found himself backwards on the grass at one of the fastest corners in the country. Yet he still ended those races in fourth and fifth respectively. And naturally, this being Ash Sutton, he drove his Alliance Racing Ford Focus ST, still in title sponsor NAPA’s centenary celebration livery, to a win in race two. 

The chatter began just over a minute into racing beginning, when Ingram’s brave move around the outside of Sutton into the chicane on lap one brought them onto a collision course at the second apex. Ingram, quite rightly bearing in mind he now had the inside line, scampered away in front. But had he completed the move before those pesky ‘SC’ boards emerged? Certainly, Alliance thought so, and Sutton reclaimed the lead under safety car conditions. Clearly BTCC organiser TOCA’s officials thought so too, because no action was taken. 

“From my side, it was touch and go, it was close,” explained Ingram. “But the way TOCA have been over this sort of stuff you have to try and act on the side of caution; you never really know what they’re going to decide to do. You have to be this side of the mark sometimes. Ash in fairness took it upon himself just to overtake me. I thought I was ahead, but with any doubt it made sense to give the place back.”

OK, take two… First lap of the restart, and Ingram tried again around the outside into the chicane. But the late-braking Sutton’s Ford skipped out of line on the inside, sending it into the fully loaded Hyundai. Both bailed out, bypassed the chicane entirely, and here’s the controversy: Sutton’s team-mate Dan Cammish and the Vauxhall Astra of Power Maxed Racing’s increasingly impressive underdog warrior Mikey Doble had made this very much a four-car clump as they raced to the chicane, but now they were detached from the leading pair. 

“He just ran me straight off,” reckoned Ingram. “He gave no option, I had to jump.” For his part, Sutton related: “A tiny bit of contact caused me to have a bit of oversteer, and from that point we’re both passengers. Tom’s solely reliant on what I’m doing; I’m a bit of a passenger of my own car. We both straight-lined the chicane. Would I have liked to have seen the redress a bit closer? Yes. Because he gained three or four car lengths and didn’t really give that back. But that’s not down to me to make that decision. It’s one of those – racing incident.” 

Ingram disagreed: “I gave the time I gained back to Ash, but Ash and I didn’t give the time back we gained on Dan Cammish. The only way I would have been able to give that time back to Cammish would be to let Ashley Sutton past, which they [the officials] wanted me to do and then return the favour after the race [with a penalty to Sutton]. Which seems utterly bonkers, but that’s unfortunately what we’re fighting against sometimes. Sometimes there’s rules and sometimes there’s common sense, and sometimes the two don’t always go together. On this occasion, common sense did work out.”

It did, yes, in the context of modern racing and track limits and whatnot. Sutton was the aggressor, albeit inadvertently, to prevent Ingram completing a successful pass. But older members of the audience may have pined for the 1970s when barriers lined this section. You wouldn’t have got away with that sort of nonsense then… 

“It was the Kwik Fit sticker off the number plate that covered the [turbo] inlet pipe and basically caused the air filter intake pipe almost to collapse, because it’s trying to suck all the turbo pressure through. If someone had said a Kwik Fit sticker was going to ruin my race… Slightly disappointing If I’m honest” Ash Sutton

The chase continued, and with just over four laps remaining, Sutton used his one and only lap of TOCA Turbo Boost out of Church Corner to make a bid for the lead. But then Ingram was accelerating away, without TTB… You could almost hear the grumbles of how quick that Hyundai is in a straight line, but Sutton had a problem. He let Cammish past soon after, and could not prevent Josh Cook – a miracle recovery with an injured right foot after his heavy crash in qualifying – from completing his climb from 14th on the grid to a podium position in his rebuilt One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R. 

“It was the Kwik Fit sticker off the number plate that covered the [turbo] inlet pipe and basically caused the air filter intake pipe almost to collapse, because it’s trying to suck all the turbo pressure through,” said an incredulous Sutton. “If someone had said a Kwik Fit sticker was going to ruin my race… Slightly disappointing If I’m honest!”

Sutton dropped from second to fourth in race one at Thruxton

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

He made up for that in race two with an utterly stonking start, the Focus spearing between Cammish and Cook and then divebombing Ingram into Allard. Now Sutton was in front and, with a surplus of TTB over his immediate pursuers, this was always going to be one of those processional BTCC races that Thruxton often throws up. Ingram was second, Cook third, and the order was unchanged until they rolled into the pitlane after the finish, and the Honda failed the ride-height test. That meant exclusion for ‘King of Thruxton’ Cook, the West Countryman, a 10-time winner here, and the end of his day of giant-challenging. 

The action was behind, where Dan Rowbottom recovered from a mid-race off onto the grass at Noble to pass the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport of a frustrated Jake Hill for a second time, while Cammish also demoted the reigning champion. Cook’s exclusion promoted Rowbottom to the podium, but things were about to get even better for him.

From fifth on the reversed grid, Rowbottom emulated Alliance Ford team-mate Sutton’s lightning start to race two, only to find himself boxed in by the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla of impressive rookie James Dorlin, who had been drawn on pole. But he dispatched the Yorkshireman on the exit of the Complex, then pulled off his now-patented ‘Segrave Rowbo dive’ on Hill on the second lap. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it?” he smiled of his getaway. “Had Dorlin not been there I think we’d have got to the Complex before Jake to be honest, because it’s such a run, but I had to back out of it at Turn 1.” 

Rowbottom, who has found a new racecraft maturity this season, was enjoying himself in front: “We hadn’t quite had the balance on the car all day, and then the guys did an amazing job,” he continued. “We looked at the data between race two and three, a couple of tweaks and that’s the result.” Hill continued to challenge and the BMW may have had enough to hang on for second, if not for a mid-race safety car that brought Cammish, Sutton and Ingram onto his heels.

“We are awful – we have no [straightline] speed as a whole and struggled,” grumbled Hill. “It would have been a plain sailing race and I maybe would have stayed in a podium position, but it was just really hard work.” 

Especially now. Cammish got on the TTB to pass Hill up to the chicane straight after the restart, then Hill pressed the button on the next lap, but his bid to reverse the positions brought Sutton – who had earlier passed Ingram with a brusque hip-and-shoulder at Segrave – into play. The yellow-and-black Ford went around the BMW into the fast left-hander at Noble, only for contact to send both off and Sutton into a spin. The sea parted for Ingram to sail into third.

It’s been a disappointing title defence for Hill, who is fifth and 67 points behind leader Sutton

Photo by: JEP

“I had to guess,” sighed a wide-eyed Ingram. “You actually had to be on power and drive into it to try and get past as quickly as you could, and I was braced for the impact coming back into my rear door, and I was going to end up joining it. I was lucky in the end and it actually did me a favour, so thank you Jake. But we didn’t really have the pace against Ash.” 

Sutton’s version? “He [Hill] had a half-spin off the back of Cammish, got on the button, looked a bit desperate trying to recover it, and was very desperate once we turned in for Noble. It ended not only his race but ruined the progress we had made, so it was a little bit of a kick in the nuts.” 

“Me and Dan were fighting for second out of Segrave and on the run up to Noble, those two came at us because I had a bad run,” explained Hill, who was given two licence penalty points for the collision (to add to a verbal warning for a tangle with Adam Morgan in race two).

“A what-could-have-been day I think, unfortunately. Tom’s taken a few points out of us, but ultimately if you look at the pace of the car compared to them, I feel like we’re in a good place” Ash Sutton

“Ash got pretty much past me and as we went into Noble I was still sort of alongside his rear wheel, and I don’t know whether it was an aero wash or what, but I just lost all front end and understeered into him and took him out. I can only apologise to Ash – I have seen him, I have apologised to him sincerely and hopefully he accepts that. I couldn’t turn the car anymore and it was too late at that point.” 

With Cammish’s TTB all used up, Ingram was able to grab second on the penultimate lap, but the impressive Rowbottom was too far gone. That’s two race weekends in a row where he’s had a victory, and he’s now up to third in the points, albeit 49 adrift of table topper Sutton. 

Further back, Senna Proctor completed a fine comeback weekend with the Excelr8 Hyundai team, crowning his day with fourth place, plenty of points in the championship – and also two on his licence for swiping out the luckless Gordon Shedden in race one. 

Behind him was Sutton. “A what-could-have-been day I think, unfortunately,” he concluded. “Tom’s taken a few points out of us, but ultimately if you look at the pace of the car compared to them, I feel like we’re in a good place.” He is, especially when your ‘what-could-have-been’ day rewards you with 49 points out of a maximum possible 67… 

Next up for the BTCC is Oulton Park on the 21-22 June

Photo by: Daniel James Smith