Ash Sutton says that the boost reduction the four Subarus have received for this weekend’s British Touring Car Championship races at Rockingham have ‘hurt’ the car’s performance, despite Team BMR claiming another 1-2 in race one.
Sutton took second in race one to move into the championship lead, but the Subaru driver felt that he had to work a lot harder for the result in the wake of a further adjustment of the boost level on the Levorgs heading into the weekend.
The 23-year-old found himself defending from the Swindon-engined MG of Josh Cook for much of the race, with the Triple Eight-run car putting pressure on Sutton in the high-speed sections of the circuit.
“[The boost reduction] really has [made a difference],”said Sutton to TouringCars.Net. “It’s hurt – for example, against Josh in the Swindon engine, I could come out five car lengths ahead onto the banking and then struggle to hold him off into the bend into turn two.
“It’s not ideal, as we then have to work our backsides off through the infield and hairpin maximising every last ounce from the car, to be able to stretch that five-car length gap just to lose it again.
“It’s a bit frustrating, but that’s what we’ve got to deal with so we’ve just got to make sure we maximise our performance.”
Looking ahead to the rest of race day, Sutton expressed some concerns about both the pace and durability of the harder-compound Dunlop tyre, on which Gordon Shedden struggled and then picked up a puncture in race one.
“We’ve got the hard tyre on now, so hopefully it wasn’t a tyre failure [for Gordon]. The majority of us at the front are on that tyre, so fingers crossed – we’re all in the same boat.
“Gordon had a puncture and Rob didn’t progress too far up the order, so that’s helped massively [in the championship] to be honest with you, but touring cars can change very quickly so keeping our nose clean is the main aim.
“Race three might be a bit more difficult because of the reverse grid, but I’d like to think we can stay there in race two, even though he [Colin Turkington] is going to be a little bit lighter.”