Ash Sutton turns an ‘average’ Saturday into a ‘positive’ Sunday

Ash Sutton was pleased to turn what he described as an ‘average Saturday’ into a ‘positive Sunday’ in the British Touring Car Championship races at Snetterton.

NAPA Racing UK’s Sutton won the reversed-grid finale race of the day in Norfolk, having earlier scored a brace of ninth-place finishes in the opening races of the day.

Sutton fought hard with Team Dynamics’ Daniel Rowbottom in race one, before opening lap contact in race two saw him tumble down to 13^th, forcing him to fight back four places over the next five laps.

Drawn to start from pole position for race three, Sutton initially lost the lead to Rowbottom but passed the Honda driver for the lead further around the lap and went on to secure his second win of the season.

It means the reigning champion has scored two wins in as many meetings and although he is fourth in the drivers’ standings he is still in overall title contention, 25 points from the top of the table.

“We made changes overnight, and we maybe played it too safe for race one,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net.

“In race two we had the same setup [as race three] but I had contact with my team-mate from someone else’s incident, which obviously upset the toe in and all sorts on the rear of the car, so it was like trying to drive a shopping trolley.

“So it was nice to see the full potential of the race car, as that was the car we had in race two and it was a shame we couldn’t use it.

“It’s been turning an average Saturday into a positive Sunday, and that’s arguably what we’ve done, so it’s getting those points when we’re on the back foot.”

Sutton is now hoping that he can carry his race-winning momentum to Thruxton in two weeks’ time to do better than the trio of podium finishes he scored in Hampshire back in May.

“If you look back at the Thruxton round at the start of the year, we had three thirds, but we didn’t have the same race car we have now, so I’m hoping we can make more progress than that.

“We’ve learnt a lot more since we were there last, so it’s just a case of rolling out the new development changes that we have and hopefully we’ve got a better package.

“We unlocked something at Knockhill and that all stemmed from the tyre test we had here, so we’ve just got to keep it in that window and we’ll be pushing for race wins.”