Why Sutton’s dominant race two win is no cause for concern for his rivals

Ash Sutton’s commanding near 20-second victory in race two of the British Touring Car Championship weekend at Oulton Park might, at first glance, appear to be a simple case of one driver possessing superior outright pace.

However, the reality was far more nuanced, shaped heavily by the series’ tyre regulations, TOCA Turbo Boost deployment allowances, race circumstances, and even late-race weather.

A key factor underpinning Sutton’s advantage lay in the BTCC’s tyre allocation rules. Having finished seventh in race one, Sutton was eligible to run the faster soft-compound tyre in race two, whilst podium finishers Tom Ingram and Dan Cammish were required to use the less competitive hard compound.

This created an immediate performance disparity, particularly at Oulton Park, where the time delta between the two compounds was one of the highest of the season, thanks to the compounds being used being the soft and hard, omitting the medium-compound rubber.

Sutton himself was quick to point out that his margin was not purely down to raw speed. “There were a few factors in there,” he explained to TouringCars.Net.

“We experienced a five-second penalty at Snetterton, where luckily, I still kept the race win. So, the target was always going to be a ten-second gap if we could get to it, so that I had covered myself.

“But at the same time, we knew there was rain coming at the end and we didn’t know how much rain. So, Tony [Carozza, Sutton’s Race Engineer] came over the radio and said, ‘right, there’s rain due, just crack on, get going’.

“I carried on pushing on as if it was a qualifying session, because as we saw in the last two laps, rain came down and you never know what’s going to happen in that scenario.

“I gave myself a huge amount of buffer. That’s all we did.”

The numbers support Sutton’s assessment. In addition to the tyre advantage, he also had significantly more TOCA Turbo Boost deployment available – eight laps compared to just three for Ingram and a single lap for Cammish.

This compounded the performance gap, with Sutton estimating the combined benefit to be substantial. “When we’re a soft-tyre car with eight laps of deployment against hard-tyre cars with none, what do people expect?

“There’s over a second deficit on the hard tyre… then you’ve got the deployment. We’re into two seconds [difference] straight away every lap,” he said.

Race dynamics further amplified Sutton’s advantage. After making a strong start and quickly moving into contention, he capitalised on a failed move by Árón Taylor-Smith on Ingram to gain track position.

From there, Sutton was able to break clear while Taylor-Smith effectively acted as a roadblock behind him. Running fourth, Taylor-Smith held up a train of cars – many on the quicker tyre – preventing them from challenging the hard-tyre runners of Ingram and Cammish.

Taylor-Smith had himself picked up some minor suspension damage in the early lap battles, limiting his ability to push on and resulting in the Irishman being forced to drive a more defensive race.

Ingram himself also acknowledged the significance of this in shaping the race outcome. “Árón’s probably left this weekend with daggers and gunshots in his back from being a human shield for most of race two,” he remarked to TouringCars.Net, highlighting how the battle behind inadvertently protected the podium positions of himself and Cammish.

While beneficial from a defensive standpoint, it also ensured Sutton faced no pressure, allowing him to exploit his performance advantage without interruption.

Crucially, Sutton was not engaged in the kind of close combat that typically compromises lap times. “I’m not in the heat of a battle, whilst they are,” added Sutton, underlining how clean air allowed him to extract the maximum from his car and tyres.

From Ingram’s perspective, the result was almost inevitable given the regulations. “Dan [Cammish] and I were on a hard tyre with no deployment. Ash was on a soft tyre with full deployment.

“If he hadn’t have won by 20 seconds, there was a problem, given there is a 1.8-second delta,” said Ingram, reinforcing Sutton’s point about the time difference between tyres.

Ingram even suggested that the scale of the disparity raises questions about the balance of the rules themselves.

“If anything, it highlights the fact that maybe we shouldn’t run as big a [tyre] disparity because it ends up not being a race. But it is what it is.”

It was ultimately the convergence of tyre regulations, TOCA Turbo Boost deployment, race traffic, and weather that transformed a strong performance into a dominant one for Sutton.