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Ash Sutton admits to “emotional rollercoaster”

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Ash Sutton admitted that his Donington Park weekend had been a ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ after he fought back from his exclusion from qualifying to snare two podium finishes at Donington Park.

After a disastrous start to the season for Team BMR at Brands Hatch, it looked like Sutton would give the Subaru team reason to cheer in qualifying when a storming lap saw him put his Levorg GT onto pole position.

Sadly for the reigning Jack Sears Trophy champion, his joy would turn to despair when his car was then thrown out of qualifying for an overboost issue – putting him to the back of the field for race one.

Sutton fought back well in race on to take P13, and then stormed through the pack to take third place in race two.

In tough wet conditions in race three, Sutton would then emerge from a long battle with Dave Newsham and Adam Morgan with a second podium of the weekend.

It leaves Sutton sitting eleventh in the championship standings, having comfortably outscored his three BMR team-mates through the opening two meetings of the year.

“It’s been an emotional rollercoaster this weekend,” he told TouringCarTimes. “We were down after FP2, then up after qualifying, then down again later on when we got the penalty.

“To then come away from race day with two podiums is fantastic from stone cold last on the grid. We’ve had a lot of things thrown at us so far this season and have had a hard time of it, but I feel I’ve performed well on track, the team has worked really hard and got us the results we hoped for.

“The battle in race three was fun and it was a really clean fight between us. I managed to get ahead of Dave, but we didn’t quite have the straight-line speed of the Chevrolet and I have to admit that he caught me unawares when he made the move into turn one on the final lap. I think I was third, fourth and fifth on that lap so it’s nice to have ended it on the podium!

“Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t where we should be yet but we are getting closer to the window and there is still more time to be had.”