Ash Sutton admitted he was ‘lost for words’ after claiming a third consecutive win in the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch whilst extending his podium run to six in a row.
Heading into the weekend, Sutton was already a comfortable 18 points clear of his rivals, but after another win and two seconds, the NAPA Racing UK driver is now 47 points clear, equivalent to more than two race victories.
Fifth fastest in Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions, Sutton then took pole position by winning the qualifying race, having benefitted from close racing ahead of him which allowed him to make an opportunistic pass.
The opening race on Sunday again saw Sutton having to battle for the win, but this time with Team VERTU’s Ricky Collard. Sutton ultimately prevailed, including posting a string of fastest laps despite the lack of TOCA Turbo Boost available to him.
In a drizzly second race, Sutton again battled with Collard for the lead, but Árón Taylor-Smith was having a sublime drive in the conditions, passing Sutton for second on lap 15, before the race was later red-flagged due to an on-track incident near the end. By this time Sutton had also passed Collard, but he was over four seconds adrift of the Toyota at the flag.
Race three saw Sutton start from seventh, but a lightning-fast start saw him move up to second by the first corner. Although the four-time champion then lost out to Tom Ingram, he battled back up to second past Mikey Doble late in the race and continued his podium run.
It means the 32-year-old is now enjoying his best-ever start to a season. Ominously, Sutton’s results are also significantly better than his dominant 2023 campaign.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bit lost for words, if I’m honest,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net of his start to the season.
“It’s pretty surreal. I thought I was at one with the car in 2023. This is another level on top of that. I’m able to extract what I want, push when I need to, things like fastest lap, stuff like that.
“The only time I found it really tricky was in race two when the conditions were against us and we were on the medium tyre, racing against cars on the soft tyre.
“If you look at the six races we’ve had, take away the qualifying races and we haven’t stepped off the podium, so that’s pretty surreal.
“The car’s allowing me to take myself to another level. We’ve seen Tom [Ingram] do that over the years – you look at what he did in 2022, 2024, or 2025.
“Every now and again you see a driver and a car combo just click, and that’s when it’s a very hard package to beat.”
Despite his high confidence and imperious results, Sutton isn’t taking his form for granted, expecting rivals to continue to improve, in particular those also running new-for-2026 cars.
“People are still developing. The Audi for me looks a very strong car, so credit to Power Maxed Racing with that.
“I’ve got a feeling we’re going to start seeing that the more laps they get under the belt, the more they’re learning, they’re going to come into the mix.
“For sure, we’re in a nice place now, but all we’ve done is developed the car in terms of its aero package.
“We’re still using the same settings, in terms of setup, that we have done for the past few years, so it’s not like we’ve unlocked performance in that way. We’ve just now gained that straight line performance we were missing.”