Ash Sutton: “We had to get the results here”

Ash Sutton admitted that Croft was a weekend where Team BMR had to deliver the goods on track after the Subaru squad enjoyed its best weekend of the BTCC season so far.

A raft of updates to the Levorg GT and a small boost increase saw the car return to the kind of form that helped Sutton secure the title last season, with the defending champion leading a front-row lock-out alongside team-mate Jason Plato in qualifying.

Sutton then took victory in the opening two races of the weekend before adding a seventh place in race three to give him the biggest weekend score of the season to date.

It means he heads into the summer break 51 points behind leader Colin Turkington and firmly in contention for the championship crown.

“This weekend was the opportunity for us to score the most points and if it wasn’t going to happen here then I don’t think it was going to happen anywhere else,” he said. “To score 54 points had brought us back into it a bit but we know we have work to do to improve our straight line speed for the circuits to come that don’t favour our car as much.

“It’s been good but there are a few things that need to be remembered. Obviously it is a rear-wheel drive track, it’s my favourite track, we had zero ballast coming into the weekend and we’ve had a big update on the cooling on the car. To be honest, that little bit of extra boost just topped it off and meant the package became one.

“It delivered in qualifying and in race one but then we lost some of the perks in race two when we had to carry the extra weight. But the car performed well with 75 kilos in it, which I’ll admit was a surprise.

“We were on the limit trying to get away from Tom [Ingram] and it might have been a different story if he hadn’t been able to keep Turkington behind – he really helped.

“The guys have done a mega job with the car but the speed traps still speak for themselves, and we know we have more work to do.”