Ash Sutton rues mistake at “critical time” as title defence ends

Ash Sutton was left to wonder what might have been after a mistake ahead of the second BTCC race of the weekend at Silverstone brought his title defence to an end.

Sutton had gone into the weekend looking to try and stay in contention towards the sharp end of the standings in an effort to remain in the mix going to Finals Day and fought back well from a poor qualifying session to race through from 25th on the grid to eleventh in race one.

However, things went wrong for the BMR driver ahead of race two when his Subaru Levorg was dropped down from its air jacks in the garage before the team had checked that everything was clear underneath, with an object still underneath the car damaging the floor and forcing the team to fit a replacement.

That meant Sutton was unable to take his place on the grid and would ultimately join the race at the back, leaving him outside the points and dropping him out of title contention.

Twelfth place from the back of the grid in race three allowed Sutton to add more points to his tally but he can no finish no higher than second when the season draws to a close at Brands Hatch in two weeks time.

“It all looked good after race one and we were in a position to try and get some half decent points in race two,” he said. “We’d done well to get that far forwards from where we qualified but then we ended up having to write off race two and were at the back for race three on the hard tyre. It means we can now write off the championship and will just go to Brands Hatch trying to win some more races.

“We all make errors. I make them on the track and mistakes get made in the garage, and that applies up and down the paddock. It just happens that the error ahead of race two came at the worst possible time, but I know that I can stand here and happily say that my team makes fewer errors than any other; it’s just unfortunate that an error has come when it was a critical moment.

“It’s another example of things that haven’t gone our way this season, like at Snetterton when there was a double points race and we couldn’t even fight for them; we’ve just not had the luck.

“I’m going to Brands Hatch now looking to see the #1 out on a high. There are people who said I shouldn’t have run it this season because it would be bad luck and that I should stick to my usual number but it might be the only time I get to run it. The team deserved to run it, the car deserved it and so did the sponsors. Hopefully we can get to the end of the season with the most wins of anyone else and end my time as champion on a positive note.”