Ash Sutton put in a sublime drive at Croft to extend his British Touring Car Championship points lead in the second race – despite hard-compound tyres on a damp track.
Sutton started his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium on the front row alongside the polesitting Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport of Josh Cook, and passed the West Countryman around the outside into Tower bend on the opening lap.
Cook, Sutton and Tom Ingram were all compelled to use the hard tyres in this race due to their top-three finishes in race one – and with the track only now beginning to dry out following the earlier rain, this would surely be an insurmountable challenge against the soft rubber on which everyone else bar Mikey Doble started.
While Sutton sailed into a clear lead, Ingram worked his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback past Cook exiting the chicane on the fourth lap, and the Toyota now came under threat from the soft-shod cars behind.
Daryl De Leon had just got past Ricky Collard for fourth, but some argy-bargy with Cook at the complex resulted in contact and the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport spinning down the order, Collard taking avoiding action, and Dan Rowbottom somehow leapfrogging all of them for third in his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon.
Rowbottom pulled off a move on Ingram, on the seventh lap of 15, around the outside into the Jim Clark Esses, and Collard quickly nipped past his Excelr8 Hyundai team-mate into the hairpin.
Tom Ingram, Team VERTU
Photo by: JEP
Now Rowbottom and Collard were second and third, on advantageous tyres, and with a significant surfeit of TOCA Turbo Boost over Sutton. The leading Ford’s advantage was 5.6 seconds, with eight laps remaining.
But before long, news came through that Rowbottom and Collard had each been penalised 5s for track-limits offences. Even if they caught and passed Sutton, the win seemed in the bag for the four-time champion.
Although Rowbottom trimmed the on-the-road gap to 1.073s by the chequered flag, Sutton still completed a seemingly impossible task: victory on the hard tyres with a TTB deficit, and in the damp to boot.
“It’s not often I’ve been welled up over a race win,” said Sutton. “Tony [Antonio Carrozza, his engineer] came over the radio and said, ‘I thought second place in race two at Donington [also on hard tyres] was spectacular, but that was phenomenal.’ And that broke me up a bit.
“We’re in such a sweet spot on the hard tyres, that it kind of negates it a little. From the moment I came over the line to start lap two, Tony said, ‘Right, qualifying laps, go.’”
After losing positions to Rowbottom and Collard, Ingram came under attack from the Alliance Ford of Dan Cammish, who had been the highest-placed starter on soft tyres but made a poor start.
Dan Cammish, NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus ST
Cammish thought he saw a gap at Sunny In, but Ingram moved across to close the door, and the contact sent the Hyundai onto the grass and, eventually, into a head-on impact with the barrier at Sunny Out, the reigning champion retiring to the pits.
Cammish’s fourth place – too far behind Rowbottom and Collard to benefit from their penalties– means he moves ahead of Ingram into second in the standings, but a gargantuan 114 points adrift of Sutton.
Charles Rainford shadowed Cammish to the finish line for fifth in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport. Behind him, Aiden Moffat (Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon) got the better of Gordon Shedden (Speedworks Toyota) on the final lap for sixth, only for a track-limits penalty to drop Moffat to ninth in the results.
Behind that Scottish civil war, Cook – on his hard tyres – did a great job to fend off an ever-growing train of cars, before Dan Lloyd inflicted race-ending damage to the Toyota at Tower on the penultimate lap.
With Moffat’s penalty, Lloyd’s Restart Racing Hyundai moved up to seventh in the results ahead of Tom Chilton (Excelr8 Hyundai). Tenth – and reversed-grid pole – went to Doble, whose use of the hard tyres in that race means his PMR Audi will go to the start for the finale on soft rubber.
Following the race, a one-minute time penalty was applied retrospectively to De Leon for race one, for not having his tyres fitted at the three-minute signal. This costs the Anglo-Filipino sixth place, but elevates WSR BMW team-mate Lewis Gilbert to his maiden top-10 finish.
BTCC Croft – Race 2 results
We want to hear from you!
Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.
Take our survey
– The Autosport.com Team
Read the full article here
