You can’t keep a good man down forever, and Ash Sutton revived hopes of mounting a defence of his Dunlop BTCC title with two wins at his favourite circuit.

The 24-year-old reigning champion laid claim to being the modern-day King of Croft by taking his fourth touring car win in three seasons at the North Yorkshire track on Sunday.

It marked a stunning turnaround from just two weeks before at Oulton Park, where Sutton struggled for race pace along with Adrian Flux Subaru Racing teammate Jason Plato.

This time, however, the pair took a one-two in both qualifying and race one, with changes to the car’s air cooling system combining with a rear wheel drive-friendly circuit, zero success ballast and a small boost increase to transform Team BMR’s fortunes.

From pole in race two, despite losing an early lead to Tom Ingram, Sutton soon regained the advantage to record the first back-to back wins of the season for any driver.

Sutton, who said the double win that moved him up to 8th in the drivers’ championship gave him a long-shot’s chance of retaining his title, was delighted to be back among the trophies.

“I have missed standing on the top step of the podium…”

“I have missed standing on the top step of the podium that’s for sure,” he added. “It was great to have a front row lock out and then to convert that into a solid race result for the team. We as a team needed it.

“We picked up one of the strongest points hauls in the past 18 months of my journey with Subaru, which just brings that little bit of hope for defending my title – but that is still a long shot.

“It’s still early doors, but 51 points is a big old gap to make up when things aren’t going swimmingly. But I definitely won’t be giving up over the next few meetings and come Knockhill we shall know if it is possible.”

Can we have more of this please @ASuttonRacing ? 🏁 pic.twitter.com/4XeGecCQGM

— Adrian Flux (@adrianflux) June 29, 2018

Sutton said the boost increase – equivalent to no more than 3-5bhp – played only a marginal role in the transformation in both his and Plato’s fortunes.

“A combination of efforts put into our cooling package by the team between Oulton and Croft played a bigger part than we thought,” he added. “The slight boost adjustment was a very small part of that.

“I think we weren’t far off the perfect storm at Croft. It’s a rear wheel drive circuit, which made our lives much easier for qualifying and race one with zero ballast, and not forgetting this is my strongest circuit on the calendar.

“For the past five years I have won a race at Croft, whatever car I’ve been in. I’m trying to claim the king of Croft title!”

Just when things were going so well…

The weekend could have been even better but for contact with Matt Neal in race three which robbed Sutton of the chance of grabbing another podium finish.

“The incident in race three hurt us, as I feel we could have pinched another podium whether that was second or third,” he said.

“I made a clean move on Matt at the final chicane, but the outright pace of the Honda in a straight line just meant he could cruise up alongside me.

“I did the respectful thing and moved over to allow a car widths gap, but unfortunately that wasn’t repaid at the apex, contact was made and it caused me to collide with the barriers on the exit of turn one.

“I feel there was some bitterness towards seeing the Subaru back at the front and I had to take the hit. It’s a shame as I love racing hard and fair but it needs to be clean.”

Still work to be done…

With the Subaru having performed well at Croft in the past three years, with four wins and seven podiums from nine races, it was no surprise to Team BMR that the stars aligned once more in Yorkshire, with more work on the cooling system to cure an overheating problem in traffic required to maintain the improvement at less naturally friendly circuits.

Speed trap data, not to mention the naked eye, showed that the Subaru was still down on power in a straight line.

“It was pretty clear from my onboards during race three that we are still down in straight line performance, especially to the Honda,” said Sutton, with the performance at Croft coming partly from a perfectly-balanced chassis ideal for the circuit.

“The figures didn’t tie up with our results to be completely honest – I feel we were punching well above our weight.

“We discovered last year a few tweaks have to be made to the chassis when running full ballast, and that’s how I managed to successfully run the full 75kgs, plus I feel I can manage the weights well as a driver.

“I would love to confidently stand here and say that we can have a repeat at Snetterton but it’s not going to be easy. There are a few longer straights there and the lap time is a considerable amount longer, so only time will tell.”

July’s mid-season tyre testing session at the Norfolk circuit, where the defending champion won two of the three races last season, gives the team the perfect opportunity to make further improvements to the car.

And if Sutton is to close the 51-point gap to leader Colin Turkington, a little extra grunt may still need to be found.

Read Jason Plato’s thoughts on the Subaru’s transformation from also-ran to race-winning car.

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