SUTTON SUPREME
REVIEW: HOW SUBARU STUNNED THE BTCC
Driving out of Brands Hatch, Ash Sutton must have been one of the most disappointed men among the entire British Touring Car Championship field. The man who had painstakingly built a reputation that had put him on a stratospheric trajectory, and here came his big chance. But he blew it.
Those feelings came in April, after the first three rounds of the season. The Jack Sears Trophy winner had been promoted to Team BMR’S top table, the works Subaru Levorg operation, and the spotlight was on.
So was the pressure, and it looked like finally something had come along to trip him up. He lined up 22nd after a buildup punctuated by spins and crashes, and all he had to show for the weekend was one 16th place finish. He wasn’t even in the points. Leaving Kent that night, he was 48 points behind tabletopper Gordon Shedden in his Team Dynamics Honda Civic.
In truth, his illustrious teammate Jason Plato had fared little better, only collecting four points in race one after a start line shunt in race two stopped him taking part in race three.
For the car that had been the class of the field over the latter period of 2016, something was clearly amiss. A regulation tweak over the winter effectively took away one of the Levorg’s strengths, which was the way it could carry the bulk of the weight low down in the car. All the engines had their centre of gravity equalised (the first time this has happened in the championship) and it threw Team BMR’S boffins a bit. It took a while to work out what this had done to the dynamics of the handling, and privately the team still felt it was lacking in the turbo boost department. However, after a highly public spat with BTCC bosses last year, all within the crew kept tightlipped on this problem.
By Donington, the BMR backroom staff had a quiet word with Sutton to reiterate their belief in him and things gradually started to change. He scored pole at Donington, although this was later stripped due to a turbo overboost. He charged through the pack to take two podium finishes.
Thruxton is no friend to any car that is lacking in boost, and all four of the Team BMR drivers, including James Cole and Josh Price too, knew this was one to struggle through. Sutton kept the momentum going with three top eight finishes. And then came Oulton Park.
The series officials reassessed the levels of turbo boost after each three meetings of the championship, and before Cheshire there was a tweak. As Sutton puts it: “My season started there. It was from Oulton that we got a car that I could work with, one that was answering the questions I asked of it.
“I always thought I could still win the championship, even after Brands Hatch at the start of the year. It went from being a steep climb to almost vertical after those opening races, but I didn’t lose the desire.”
From that point on, Sutton was untouchable. Six wins in the next five meetings, including once with a full 75kg of ballast on at Snetterton, had others raising eyebrows at his pace.
Sutton, for his part, points to the fact that all of the team’s testing had been done with the maximum weight aboard. Still, it was mighty impressive.
There were no flaws to his driving: qualifying, overtaking, changeable conditions and racecraft were performed to such a degree that it was so easy to overlook that he was only in his second year.
Perhaps the only flaws were exposed at Brands Hatch in the pressurecooker environment of the finale. In the opening race, he kept battling for second position even though the rostrum place he was occupying was more than enough. And then, in race two, he was beaten up. It was such a strange sight for the man who had been unflappable all year, but he plummeted to 12th from third, while his main rival Colin Turkington steered his WSR BMW 125i M Sport to an imperious victory.
There was a minirant as he stepped from the car, claiming that others had made life more difficult for him than they should. It was all heatofthemoment stuff that was evidence that no matter how impregnable Sutton may feel, there are still little bits to add to his armoury.
But there is no question that the Bishop’s Stortford man was the right champion. Six wins proved that, and his comeback from the early dramas was remarkable.
The next question has to be just how far can Sutton go? He has conquered the BTCC at a very early stage of his career – he is the second youngest ever champion after 1966 winner John Fitzpatrick, who was only just past 22 years old. To put that into perspective, Plato was 29 when he made his British Touring Car debut…
For the sake of the UK series, it would be an asset to keep hold of Sutton for at least a few more years before other interests might tempt him.
One of the subplots of the season was what was happening to Sutton’s teammate Plato. After that roundone shunt at Brands Hatch, the twotime champion struggled to generate enough grip from his car, and was also suffering in a straight line. No matter what setup he and engineer Paul Ridgway bolted on to the estateshaped car, it wasn’t working for him. It was particularly painful as the other side of the garage was collecting silverware on a regular basis.
It wasn’t until Knockhill that a breakthrough with the differential had Plato looking something like his old self, and he won in Scotland. He followed that with a podium at
Rockingham. But by that stage, he throwing his weight behind Sutton’s campaign. has not forgotten how to drive something clearly didn’t click – and probably won’t find out until people involved are allowed to speak freely nightmare season. Despite repeatedly being asking for answers to the drop off in form, there definitive reason as the frustrations mounted. There were flashes of pace from the BMR drivers too, with Cole taking popular maiden win at Rockingham. wasn’t gifted, either: it was earned pole position and he held off an challenge from rivals. Technical director Carl Faux was full of praise for weekend, and it showed that he his place in the BTCC. was only drafted in on the eve of the season after limited running in a Renault Clio, and belied his levels of experience to knock on the door of being a regular pointsscorer.
While Sutton was experiencing the big spotlight for the first time, WSR and its championship challenger Colin Turkington were old hands at this environment. Coming into this campaign, there was fresh impetus too: Turkington was back at his ‘home’ team after a turbulent time with BMR in its Subaru, and now there was full manufacturer backing from BMW. The stakes were even higher than before.
WSR had gone into the championship finale in 2016 with Sam Tordoff chasing the crown. There was nothing wrong with the chassis but, with BMW’S input, there was a significant change. Out went the old motor, which was basically a sixyearold normallyaspirated unit with a turbo bolted on the side, and in came the new B48 powerplant. It was a bespoke twolitre turbocharged motor which WSR hoped would be the magic bullet.
The season started disastrously for Turkington, when he was the innocent victim of start line contact with Matt Neal in the very first round, which immediately put him on the back foot.
But Turkington is a superb points collector. He bounced back with a win in the second meeting of the season when Shedden was kicked out for a ride height infringement, and then repeated that with a controlled drive to victory at Thruxton in the reversedgrid race.
Traditionally, BMW’S campaign kicks into life at the two rearwheeldrive friendly tracks, Oulton Park and Croft. However, a persistent misfire, which had plagued Turkington since the start of the season, combined with contact in race one, ruined his first race and he was only able to recover to fifth place in the final encounter. A big haul of points went begging there.
A win and a second place at Croft were redemption, but in both races he was either headed or chased by Sutton. The advantage that Turkington would normally be able to pull over title rivals was negated when that rival also happened to be in a similar rearwheeldrive car…
And that was the case for the rest of the season. Where the BMW should have strode clear, the Subaru was able to match it and, in the end, Turkington only took one more win in the penultimate race when everything was on the line for the championship.
A boost change over the latter part of the year also left the car breathless, although the welldrilled driver would only admit that the team needed to work to get the maximum from the car to defeat Subaru. It was clear he was speaking through gritted teeth though.
In the sister Team BMW 125i M Sport, Rob Collard’s season was another typified with superb racecraft, which was necessary due to his qualifying bogey. Only twice did he start the opening race of the weekend inside the top 10, but his swashbuckling drives always kept him in the hunt. There was a win at Thruxton in May, and he wasn’t out of the points until round 22 at Rockingham, when a lacklustre performance meant he finished 17th. Even after that (and crashing out later in the day), he was still firmly in the championship in fourth place. It all fell apart at Silverstone when a huge race one crash left him concussed, and that would eventually lead to him missing the last three rounds at Brands completely.
Andrew Jordan’s first season in a rearwheeldrive car started well with a win at Brands Hatch, but there were also too many weekend where he was anonymous. The fears about getting to grips with a different drivetrain were dispelled immediately, but perhaps the bigger challenge was to build up the setup knowledge in a new car. The highs were very high and there could have been more wins but for a car failure when he was leading at Snetterton. With that knowledge in his armoury for 2018, there could be a title threat here.
Along with Turkington, another who had been holding back his real views was reigning champion Shedden. Still the fastest outright driver in the championship, he suffered his fair share of speedbumps along the way. The most significant early blow came at Donington, when he superbly won race three in tricky conditions, only for his Civic Type R to fail a postrace ride height check.
He was still leading the points after the Snetterton rounds of the contest, but the runin was a nightmare. As the rearwheeldrive cars and others enjoyed using their boost allocations, the Team Dynamics Civics were left adrift. As if that didn’t make it enough of an uphill task a frontright puncture for Shedden at Rockingham, which was caused after contact, effectively put him out of the game.
His teammate Neal had three low points over the opening part of the season, which kicked the stuffing out of his hopes. The first was in the very first round when he was in contact with Turkington away from the start line, and the second was when he was not allowed to start race three at Donington because he was in the gravel at the time that the onelapold race was red flagged.
He held on gamely, and his 60th championship win at Thruxton should have been followed by another but it was thwarted by an electrical problem. It was being ruled out of the opener at Croft with damage that really put him on the back foot. There was another win in race three at Silverstone, which he earned after a super dice with Rob Huff (Power Maxed Vauxhall Astra) but it was too late by that stage.
Power Maxed Racing had taken a huge step forward in 2017 to join the manufacturer ranks with its first selfpenned car, the Astra. Proven race winner Tom Chilton and series newcomer Senna Proctor joined the driving strength.
The team recruited well on the engineering front and the car was a very solid proposition at the start of the season. As others got to grips with their cars, the Vauxhall slipped back to the fringes of the top 10. Nevertheless, rookie Proctor excelled at this level and won the Jack Sears Trophy 15 times on his way to that silverware.
A glimpse of what could be to come from the car was when Huff deputised for the indisposed Chilton at Silverstone and came within a hair’s breadth of taking a victory. When the car is fully unlocked, there is a race winner here.
For the factorybacked MG team, the season was a writeoff. There was a revolving door in the backroom staff just as there was in the driving lineup, and the longinthetooth MG6 showed its age. Aron Taylorsmith and Josh Cook finished the season but there was the feeling that all concerned couldn’t wait for it to be over. MG’S continued participation at this level is under question at the moment and a highlight of one fifth place at Rockingham, thanks to Cook, is hardly likely to tempt the firm to return. ■