Photo: PSP Images

Championship leader Ash Sutton focused on points

Championship leader Ash Sutton says his focus on race day at Thruxton will be on maximising his points score after qualifying in a solid seventh place.

The Team BMR driver had topped the times in drying conditions in the opening practice session of the weekend but found himself down in 15th in the dry second session in his ballast heavy Subaru Levorg.

It looked like Sutton would be forced to settle for a similar result in qualifying as the clock ticked before the late stoppage caused by the clash between Mark Blundell and Tom Chilton at the final chicane.

Given a chance to bolt on another set of tyres, Sutton jumped up to seventh place and said he was pleased with the end result.

“I said to Tony my engineer before we went out that the top ten was the aim so I’m pleased with P7,” he said. “I lost a lap to track limits and it didn’t look good before the red flag as we were outside the top 15 but we then had the chance to stick some new tyres on and it was do or die in the final minutes. I was a bit reserved in the final chicane to avoid getting done for track limits but we came out okay.

“Coming to Thruxton with full ballast isn’t a position we expected to be in and we need to be collecting all the points we can as these aren’t our strong tracks. I’m a racer and it isn’t as simple as that as I want to be pushing hard, but we have to make sure not to do anything silly and score as many points as possible.”