Ash Sutton was unconcerned about losing some of his huge British Touring Car Championship lead at Oulton Park, with the NAPA Racing UK driver still holding an advantage greater than two race wins.
Sutton finished behind title rival Tom Ingram in two of Sunday’s three races, although a dominant win in race two, ahead of the Team VERTU driver, meant Ingram only made a limited, nine-point dent in Sutton’s championship advantage, which now stands at 48 points.
In Sunday’s opening race, Sutton had targeted moving forward from third on the grid, but contact with Josh Cook at Cascades whilst battling for second sent him into a huge slide and lost him a handful of positions, dropping the Ford racer a handful of positions, with Sutton ultimately going on to finish in seventh.
That meant he entered race two able to run the faster soft tyre and with much more TOCA Turbo Boost [TTB] than his front-running rivals, and Sutton duly delivered a dominant, 19.3-second win – the biggest victory margin this century.
However, running the slower hard tyre for race three with the least TTB in the field meant Sutton struggled to ninth at the end, from 11th on the grid, whilst Ingram finished all three of Sunday’s races on the podium.
Sutton admitted that tyre strategy played a big role in the weekend’s results, with the four-time champion ending up on a different strategy to his rivals thanks to the outcome of race one, where the top three finishers have to run the hardest-available tyre for race two.
“We’ve lost nine points since the start of the weekend,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net. “We got put out of sync with Tom and Dan [Cammish] after race one.
“It was looking really good – we were up to second by Turn 2, and that got undone, which was a shame.
“But ultimately throughout the weekend, to have only dropped nine points isn’t the end of the world.
“In race three, I got put back in the middle of the pack with the hard tyre and no deployment, which was a double whammy. I was up against it, but we actually made progress – I’m really pleased with that.
“I wanted to get seventh on the on road, wanted to be the first hard tyre, but couldn’t quite do it. We didn’t have the deployment to go after Chris [Smiley] and [Dexter] Patterson in front of me.”
Sutton was cautious about feeling too comfortable about his huge championship margin heading into the mid-season break.
“We need to keep our powder dry, keep out of trouble, but also still deliver. We’re not taking our foot off the gas in any way, shape or form. We’re still cracking on with the job.
“It’s just about making sure we don’t trip over our own feet.”
Sutton also expressed some surprise about the reduction of boost (20 millibars) handed to NAPA Racing UK for the Oulton Park event, which is believed to be equivalent to less than 3 bhp.
“Of course there is [an impact on performance],” added Sutton. “I think we worked out that it equates to X amount of lap time.
“But in the respect of has it affected our results? I couldn’t tell you because I’ve not experienced that.
“Everyone says how quick we are in a straight line. I mean, the Hyundai is still the world’s quickest car touring I’ve ever come across – that thing still motors along faster than what we do.
“So, it’s just a little bit confusing that we’ve had that reduction and for the past four years they haven’t.
“It’s quite clear that we’ve got a really strong car under us now. And all we have done is made it a saloon. Simple as that. So the pain of the hatchback is no longer.”