THE SECRETS OF SUTTON’S BTCC SUCCESS

INTERVIEW: ASH SUTTON Wecaughtupwiththisyear’sbritishtouringcarchampion.by Mattjames

Ash Sutton had a face like thunder at 1510hrs on Sunday, October 1. It was Brands Hatch, and the Subaru Levorg British Touring Car Championship driver had pulled into the pits after claiming 12th place in the second of the weekend’s three races.

He had been beaten up in the race, with cars passing him almost at will. It was at complete odds with the way the Team BMR man had ripped up the championship until that point.

He had taken six wins, and came to Kent with a 10-point advantage. After race two, the gap was down to a mere six points. There would be only one race left to make or break his season.

Sutton gave ITV4’S Louise Goodman short shrift when she quizzed him after that second event. He didn’t really have an explanation for his slump down the order. “I will admit, I was rattled,” says Sutton looking back. “In that race, I realised that maybe I had been a bit blinkered in how I thought I was going to win the title. I had underestimated it and I made my own job a lot, lot harder in race three.

“But I took myself to the race truck and thought things through – which made me the driver I was in race three. Without that low, I wouldn’t have bounced back the way I did.”

With Sutton starting 12th and race two winner and title rival Colin Turkington (WSR Bmw125imsport) directly in front of him in 10th spot, the gloves were off for the finale.

“If you look back at that race, I was glued to Colin – whenever he made a move, I made a move. There was no chance he was getting away from me,” explains Sutton. “If he threw it up the inside of someone, I was right on his bumper.”

The defining moment came on lap two, when Turkington went to pass the out-of-shape Mat Jackson (Motorbase Ford Focus) and the two made the slightest of brushes. It was enough to break the suspension on thebmwand force Turkington out. Sutton had to ask three times on the radio what the title situation was before he could truly believe he had the crown in his pocket.

“I know this might sound odd, but I really didn’t want Colin to retire from that race,” says Sutton, who ended up in third spot in the final showdown. “I didn’t want people who were just looking at that weekend to say that it had been gifted to me or that I had it easy. Obviously, there had been the whole season up until that point, but not everyone sees that. I wanted to beat Colin fair and square on track.”

He did enough and that was it, his stunning career trajectory had taken another massive leap forwards. It was easy to overlook the fact that the 23-year-old was only in his second season of the British Touring Car Championship. It was only 16 months since he’d taken his maiden BTCC win for the Triple Eight MG team. Sutton is not only fast on the race circuit…

The desire to perform, and perform quickly, is down to a number of key stages in his career, one of which threatened to derail him completely.

He had begun his career in the costeffective Formula Vee single-seater series as a way of learning the tracks without a huge financial outlay. A road car crash in 2011 left him with kidney complications and that put him out of the cockpit for more than two seasons. When Sutton returned, he knew he had to make up for the time away by putting his progression on fast forward.

“I remember sitting with the doctors and surgeons, and they told me that I might never race again,” he says starkly. “That focused my mind a bit. They weren’t sure if my organs would be able to withstand the forces that you experience when you race. There was a real chance it was all over.

“In early 2014, I went to a kart track and did a race, which I won. A few weeks later, I went for a check-up and everything was fine. That was a massive relief.”

A lot of his early kart racing had been done on a limited budget, and that was another building block in making sure that he got the most from every situation. “Sometimes, we didn’t have the funds to test,” he explains. “I would turn up at a race meeting with no time to learn, and in those situations, you have to take things on board very quickly. If I did test, I would set a great time in the second session, for example, and then spend the rest of the day going around the houses with set-up and then you wouldn’t be any faster at the end of the day. So I realised how to get to the limit quickly and that is something I have always been able to do.”

After the road crash, he restarted his career in Formula Ford that season (again, it was an option he took due to a cut-price deal) and he was third in the points despite missing three races. But there was something else that happened that year which gave him the break he needed.

“I was working at the Rye House kart track, and [Team BMR boss] Warren Scott used to pop in. He was just getting into the karting business and I was the guy on the front desk,” recalls Sutton. “At the time he was the big touring car driver and I was just me. We knew each other, but not that well.

“Then, at Rockingham, I remember being in the Formula Ford paddock and Warren turned up on his golf buggy: he’d come over from the BTCC paddock, and he told me he wanted a word. That’s when my world changed.”

It did, because Scott was about to go large in the BTCC by hiring Jason Plato and Turkington to head up Team BMR in the BTCC INVWCCS and he also wanted to create a driver academy. Sutton was his first pick.

That desire to push forward in Sutton’s career was evident. When the racer entered the Renault UK Clio Cup, a category that most take a while to master, Sutton was clear in his objective: win it in year one and get out. He was as good as his word, and Scott helped him land a drive with Triple Eight, which Team BMR owns alongside the factory Subaru team. He stated that he wanted to claim the rookie-based Jack Sears Trophy in his maiden year but didn’t see why outright wins were out of the question. When he crossed the line first at Croft, it was a precursor to him lifting the JST pot at the end of the campaign.

All this led him to the point at Brands Hatch this year where he battled with two-time title winner Turkington for the ultimate prize. In truth, Sutton has looked at home in this company since he first drove a BTCC car.

“I have never felt intimidated, right

from the opening race in the BTCC,” says Sutton. “I feel like I belong. You need to establish yourself in the BTCC, and the best way of doing that is just by getting stuck in there and getting your elbows out. I don’t mind how many championships other people have got – they have been doing it for longer than me, after all.”

There are very few flaws in Sutton’s driving: he is the consummate racer and there are rarely mistakes (despite an early season blip when he was getting to grips with the factory-backed Levorg). There were no spins and his ability to overtake was what led ITV4 pundit and former racer Paul O’neill to christen Sutton as the ‘Max Verstappen of British Touring Cars’.

“I honestly don’t know where it comes from,” says Sutton. “I work hard. I am able to adapt to situations quickly, I suppose, and I like to look at things from all angles. I am not suggesting that others don’t do that, but it has been one of the things I pride myself on. I will look at all situations from all angles and work out what needs to be done.

“That is how I am when I set goals for the year ahead: I will never set myself a target that I don’t think I can realistically achieve. It is not arrogance: it is an honest assessment of what I think I can do.”

Being honest is something that also comes naturally to Sutton, and he isn’t afraid to point to areas where he thinks his hand could be even stronger in 2018.

“I think if you look back, there are areas I can improve on,” he says. “My qualifying, for example. I’m fine racing against others, but not so strong against the clock. I had one pole this year. I can drag a lap time out of the car when I have to, but qualifying is a weaker area for me. Look at Donington Park [when he was stripped of pole for an engine overboost]. I went from the back of the grid [32nd] and was still able to claim two podiums in the weekend’s three races. That shows that there’s nothing wrong with my racecraft, and thosearethesituationsienjoythemost.”

And enjoy 2017 is something that Sutton did.

“It has sunk in, and it is a great feeling – it is something you think about every day,” says Sutton – but there are demands. “I have had to go out and buy three more black tie suits! I have worked it out that by the time I finish the last awards ceremony in February, I will have done 10 in total – the pressures of being a champion, hey?”

While the relief and the emotions of that final-day encounter at Brands Hatch will live long in the memory, there are immediate tasks facing Sutton that have taken more priority in his life than reflection. He has yet to nail down his deal to return to the category in 2018 and that is uppermost in his mind.

“Winning the title is a platform, a stage, but it is not the end of the journey – if anything it is just the beginning,” says the Bishop’s Stortford man. “As much as you want to enjoy it, you have to look forwards. I hope I can have something tied up around the time of the Autosport International Show in early January. I really don’t want it to drag on any longer than that and we are working hard.” ■