Ash Sutton admits Knockhill ‘a massive weekend’

Ash Sutton admits that the Knockhill weekend proved to be ‘massive’ in his quest to secure another BTCC title.

Sutton headed into the weekend leading the standings by six points over Tom Ingram and looked good to extend his advantage when he scored pole on Saturday – maintaining a 100 per cent record for his NAPA Racing UK squad this season.

However, heavy rain during the opening race threw the weekend on its head, with Sutton electing to stay out on slick tyres in the lead before the deployment of the safety car left him with no option to come in given the number of cars behind that had already switched to wet tyres.

With Ingram taking the flag first, he looked set to secure the points lead only to fail the ride height test, meaning he was disqualified from the result and dropped to the back for race three.

Sutton took advantage with second place behind Jake Hill and then stormed to victory in torrential rain in race three to move 37 points clear of Ingram with three rounds and nine races left to run.

“It’s been a mind-blowing weekend,” he admitted. “At the end of race one before the ride height checks, we were six or seven points behind and I was wondering how we’d ended up in that position. A few hours later, we come away from the weekend with a lead of nearly 40 points in the standings.

“Don’t get me wrong, others have had bad luck this weekend but we’ve had our own bad luck this season and it’s nice to now have some breathing space in the championship.

“At both Oulton Park and Croft, we got to the end of the second race and we had built a bit of a gap to Tom, but then in race three, we lost it all again. This weekend we have opened things up and this has been massive for me.

“Now we have a lead, we have to try and manage it over the races to come, but it isn’t over by a long way. This is the BTCC, so there is plenty of time for things to change.”