Ashley Sutton stormed through to win the final race of the British Touring Car Championship’s opening weekend at Donington Park to cement his points lead.
While the four-time champion charged through from eighth on the grid in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium, reigning title holder Tom Ingram scythed from 21st and last to second at the wheel of Excelr8 Motorsport’s lead Hyundai i30 N Fastback.
Sutton and Alliance Ford team-mate Dan Cammish both started from the fourth row, and were the highest-placed on the grid on the soft option tyres – with the exception of front-row man Dexter Patterson.
But they were low on TOCA Turbo Boost. Sutton was up to fourth on the opening lap, while reversed-grid poleman Ricky Collard led the way in his Excelr8 Hyundai. He was past Daryl De Leon for third on lap two, then got ahead of De Leon’s West Surrey Racing BMW team-mate Charles Rainford fifth time around to move up to second.
Collard was the only driver ahead of Sutton, who was on the bootlid of the Hyundai by the end of the eighth lap. Collard went too late on the brakes at Redgate, slid wide and conceded the lead, but the never-say-die former British GT champion kept in Sutton’s wheeltracks for a couple of laps.
Collard then fell back into a feisty scrap with Cammish, which allowed the looming Ingram onto their tail. Some ferocious racing between Cammish and Ingram ended with the Hyundai squeezing through at Schwantz Curve on the 14th lap of 18, and Ingram then quickly dispatched Collard for second.
Sutton was now 4.034 seconds in front, and Ingram had three laps of TTB to Sutton’s one. He slashed the gap to 2.239s by the start of the final lap, but was now out of TTB. Sutton never even used his power boost, and crossed the line 2.188s to the good.
Cammish got ahead of Collard, but a 10s penalty for track limits demoted the Ford to 10th. Collard therefore ended up on the podium.
Aiden Moffat completed a strong day by taking fourth in his Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon, with Rainford fifth and Patterson’s PMR Audi sixth.
Next came Chris Smiley (Restart Racing Hyundai), Adam Morgan (Plato Racing Mercedes A35 Saloon) and Sam Osborne’s Alliance Ford in seventh, eighth and ninth respectively.
A fourth-lap shemozzle at Coppice, triggered when Gordon Shedden made contact with De Leon, also involved Tom Chilton and Josh Cook as collateral damage, both having to visit the pits. It also opened the way for Ingram to leapfrog a sizeable proportion of the midfield on his rise up the order.
After a dreadful time in the first two races, Ingram ends the opening weekend eighth in the points, but crucially facing no TTB restriction as the series heads to its second round of the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit.
Sutton leads the way by 18 points from Rainford, with Moffat lying third.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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