Ash Sutton: ‘I’ll be sticking my nose in’ on race day

Ash Sutton is planning to ‘get stuck in’ to make progress from 11^th on the grid and keep his narrow chances of clinching the 2025 British Touring Car Championship title alive at Brands Hatch on Sunday.

Sutton qualified on the sixth row of the grid for the opening race after failing to progress from Q2, citing a tyre-related issue for the drop-off in pace he suffered, with his Q2 time being almost half a second slower than he had earlier been in Q1.

Crucially, title rival Tom Ingram was four places ahead of Sutton in seventh, meaning an already uphill task going into the event is now that slight bit harder for Sutton.

With Ingram needing to outscore Sutton by at least 11 points to wrap the title up in race one on Sunday, it appears unlikely that the championship will be decided early on in the day.

And Sutton says he will be getting his elbows out in race one as he seeks to progress forward, believing in the strong race pace of his Ford Focus.

“It’s not ideal,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net. “Believe it or not, there was an issue in Q1 with the rear tyres and then with the front tyres in Q2. Both times were not ideal.

“It’s a bit of a kick in the nuts, if I’m honest. Despite the issue in Q1, the car felt good. It was the first time we put it on the softs.

“In Q2 the issue we had was much worse than the issue in Q1. It’s just one of those cases of what could have been…

“The championship is out of my control. Ultimately even if we outqualified [Ingram] we’d still need him to have this so-called DNF, and until that happens its out of my control.

“We’re going to focus on Manufacturers’ and Teams’ points, and make sure we maximise that. If he [Ingram] has a DNF of some sort we’ll do the best job we can, getting as many points as we can, and hopefully he does [have a DNF] and we can capitalise on that.

“We’ve got a good car. We’ve always had a good race car, we look after the tyres, and I’ve just got to pull out some old Ash Sutton moves and get stuck in.

“I’m not here to crash or things like that; Manufacturers’ and Teams’ points are a big thing for us.

“But I will be sticking my nose in.”