Blistering start gives Sutton victory

Four-time British Touring Car Championship title winner Ash Sutton put in a masterful performance to win the second race of the day at Thruxton.

Sutton lined up fourth after his problems in the first race, but his NAPA-liveried Alliance Racing Ford Focus ST somehow squeezed between second- and third-starting Dan Cammish and Josh Cook off the line, and then lanced inside poleman Tom Ingram at Allard to grab the lead from the off.

Championship leader Sutton, knowing that Ingram had just one lap of TOCA Turbo Boost for this race to his own four, deployed on lap two to blitz out a gap of 1.800 seconds.

Ingram and his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback chipped a few tenths away from that margin over the following laps, but he began to find himself under mid-race pressure from Cook.

The One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R was right on the back of Ingram, but fluid dropped on the track at Goodwood caused a few lairy moments, and Cook was also worried about copping a track limits penalty, with Church Corner particularly sternly policed this weekend.

While that freed up Ingram, he was unwilling to push too hard in pursuit of Sutton – who had a TTB surfeit but never used all of it – and eventually trailed the Ford by 3.875 seconds at the finish.

Sutton, who described his getaway as “like having rear-wheel drive”, admitted: “I’m sure some of the guys had not the best of starts. It was all done off the line. And I had probably the best start I’ve ever had in a front-wheel-drive car – and on the hard tyre.”

About the mid-race on-track spillage, he said: “That woke me up. I thought I’d just manage everything, and then all of a sudden I’m sideways everywhere.”

Reigning champion Jake Hill ran fourth early on in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport, before the Alliance Ford of Dan Rowbottom found an opening at Segrave on the seventh lap to grab the position.

Hill then came under attack from Adam Morgan, whose Excelr8 Hyundai got most of the way past on the outside entering the chicane, before contact from Hill sent him wide and he skipped the chicane.

On the next lap, Rowbottom ran wide onto the grass at Noble, putting Hill back up to fourth.

With five laps remaining, Rowbottom got back ahead of Hill at the chicane, and on the penultimate tour Cammish, who had lost ground on the opening lap from the front row, made it an Alliance Ford 1-4-5 by passing Hill.

Rowbottom inherited a podium position after Cook’s Honda fell foul of the post-race ride-height check. “We had a little bit of nose-to-tail in the first couple of corners, and that caused a little bit of damage,” argued Cook.

Behind Hill, promoted to fifth with Cook’s exclusion, Senna Proctor won an intra-team Excelr8 Hyundai war with Adam Morgan for sixth, which was all in vain anyway because Morgan was penalised down to 12th for track-limits offences.

Aron Taylor-Smith had his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport in among this battle, but a puncture on the last lap sent him to the back of the field, promoting team-mate James Dorlin to seventh – and pole for the reversed-grid race on just his fourth weekend in the BTCC.

The Restart Racing Hyundais of Chris Smiley (eighth) and Dan Lloyd (10th) sandwiched WSR BMW driver Daryl DeLeon in the remaining top 10 positions.