HEAVYWEIGHT 2: Ash Sutton
Even the eventual champion himself didn’t know what his prospects where ahead of the 2020 campaign. Ash Sutton had joined the amalgamated Laser Tools Racing and BMR squad, but the hardware, the rear-wheel-drive Infiniti Q50, was brand new.
The car was a combination of the engineering prowess of BMR Racing and the boffins at Laser Tools Racing. They both took what they knew from an experimental half-season with Aiden Moffat at the wheel in 2019 and poured all of that knowledge into two new-build chassis. The results were spectacular, and Sutton’s charge to last year’s crown was a prime example of his ability to think on his feet and cope with whatever was thrown his way.
Laser Tools Racing will be run in conjunction with Team Hard this season after a commercial agreement between the two teams, but the engineering strength behind the Infiniti Q50 – including Sutton’s long-term engineer Antonio Carrozza – remains unchanged for 2021.
Sutton points out that there is ground to be gained in terms of pace for the entire programme. “We started out with a car that was brand new at the beginning of 2020, and we couldn’t really make any fundamental changes to it over the course of the year,” explains the two-time title winner. “We were working with what we had, but now we have been able to go away and think about things and tackle any areas that we wanted to,
“The closed season has given us a chance to unlock the little things that we couldn’t last year. It was a great package and we don’t expect major gains but, for us, it is just about chipping away at finer details.”