Ash Sutton made it seven from seven poles for NAPA Racing UK. The championship leader called qualifying ‘a bit of an eye opener’.
Sutton has called his car many things this year. When asked if he could come up with a new word to describe its speed the #116 driver was a little stuck.
“I can’t to be fair. I think for the first time this year we’ve actually drove outside of the boundaries of the car there. I had to dig ridiculously deep like that. We had a few issues.
“FP1 didn’t do much running and FP2 we had to completely smash the dampers and smithereens off the new kerbs here. So, we didn’t do any running in FP2. To then roll out and qualify, it was a bit of an eye-opener, that’s for sure”.
After the weather had been all over the place no one knew how to setup the car. Sutton was one of those who did not really touch the car before qualifying.
“I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t really changed too much with the car because we haven’t done much running. We literally put slicks on, we had our standard wet changes that we do. When it started to dry and we put slicks on, we reverted those changes.
“That’s pretty much how it rolled out of the truck. We’ve kind of been in that place the whole year. Whether we need to fine-tune it for tomorrow, I don’t know. The question mark still is weather conditions and what they’re going to do”.
Sunday leaves a little worry in the mind of Sutton. The launch off the line from Jake Hill at Oulton Park lives at the front of Sutton’s mind.
“I think we’ve got an issue where Jake’s going to be fast off the line. Since they’ve had their start allocation changed, they’ve definitely been stronger. You look at Oulton Park, he jumped from being alongside me, then starting a row behind me.
“So, I’ve got to keep my eyes peeled on that. But if we can get our head down, I think we’ll be alright from that point on”.
After leaving Croft with the same points gap to Tom Ingram as he started, Sutton is adamant on finishing all three races on Sunday.
“I’ve still got to approach it no different to how I’ve been approaching it every weekend. So, we’ll still be gunning Race 1 and 2, but we need to survive Race 3 at the minute. They’ve given me… I got the looks from the guys there” Mechanics staring at Sutton as mentions race three. “It’s been a bugbear.
“One of them I could have maybe done something about, the other one at Croft I couldn’t. So, it’s one of those touring car races that’s got to bank on some other people having some bad luck at some point.”