Ash Sutton happy to “tinker away” with title winning Infiniti

Defending champion Ash Sutton has welcomed the chance to “tinker away” with his title-winning Infiniti Q50 as preparations continue for the start of the new British Touring Car Championship season.

The Laser Tools Racing driver secured his second title at the wheel of the car last season, despite the team being able to conduct only limited testing across the year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Already this season, the team has been able to complete a number of days of running as it seeks to strengthen the package going into the season opener at Thruxton, with Sutton admitting that there had been improvements to make.

“We’ve had a few days on track now and have been able to develop the car a bit and tinker away with it,” he said. “It’s nice to get stuck into some testing and going away from where we were last year with the car; putting it in different place and almost starting with a blank canvas a bit. We’ve made some good progress although it hard to know what other people are doing on test days and what they up to. We can just go with what we have, and see where we end up.

“Last year we didn’t really want to leave the window we were in with the car, and we know it wasn’t always the quickest and still needed some improvements. So far, it has been pretty reactive to the changes we have made and in general, we’ve been going in the right direction. There have been a few little negatives, but they are all things that we can learn from and it’s what testing is all about.

“I’m confident that we can arrive at Thruxton with something that will put us at the front. Having a third car this season has been good as has the addition of Dan Millard working on Aiden’s [Moffat] car, and we’re all working towards the same end goal.”