As Sutton revels in championship glory, BTCC's independents' battle goes to the wire

Winning a championship is the peak of anyone’s career. When they win multiple, talk of the first one being a favorite, of being “special” is common. But what if you’ve won five?

That’s a position the British Touring Car Championship’s Ash Sutton now finds himself in. He’s alone in that, too, breaking free from Andy Rouse and Colin Turkington who, until Sunday, both sat with him in the four-timer’s club. And since 2023, he's also been the only driver to win titles in both rear- and front-wheel-drive cars.

Having won so much, you’d be forgiven for thinking the novelty might have worn off. But Sutton places his latest, record-breaking triumph ahead of the rest.

“I think we can swap that,” Sutton emphatically told media that included RACER after the BTCC races at Silverstone. “Obviously the first one is special. It's the first British Touring Car Championship. I got one.

“I was a lot younger, a lot more loose, shall we say. A bit more out of control, but I'm a completely different driver to what I was then and the fifth, for sure, is the one that sits above.”

Sutton clearly has talent, but a key ingredient this season has been NAPA Racing UK’s Ford Focus Titanium Saloon. The hatchback the team previously fielded – and took Sutton to the 2023 title – had reached its development peak. And, as a compact hatchback, it didn’t have the aero benefits a more traditional sedan has. Change was needed.

“The conversation we had with [team owner] Pete Osborne at the end of 2022 was: ‘you need to put this car in the truck, and we never want to see it again’,” said the team’s chief engineer Antonio Carrozza. “When it was the hatchback in 2022, we were developing another car at that point in time. That project went sour, and it was like, okay, well, we need to put everything into the hatchback.

“So we did that for 2023, but at the end of that year, I said to Pete, ‘I don't think we're going to get another championship out of this car. We're going to need to do something like a saloon’.

“So to be able to then go and do it for this season and prove that the theory was right is really nice. The car rolled out the truck for the first test, and it was good.”

A new car might seem to be a key move in searching for an obvious step up, but Sutton and NAPA Racing UK were in the unusual position of having a new car that was actually… old.

In the off-season, the team effectively cut the rear off the old hatchback and grafted a sedan rear end onto it. The result appeared to be a new car, but it was one that had all the familiarity and benefits of the one it replaced, negating much of the development and bedding-in period usually associated with a fresh build.

“We have got the same car underneath us and we've essentially just remodeled it externally, which has given us the straight line performance we were looking for,” said Sutton. “But we've still got the same toolset we've been using since ‘23 in terms of tuning it, getting in the window.

“It's quite nice to be able to roll it straight out. Yes, it's a new car, but it's very much the old car as well.

“So we kind of hit the ground running, and we came to every track this year knowing what we wanted to, what tweaks were needed to make it work, especially with the likes of the hard tire [and] things like that. We've got our little tricks that we do, which bring the car alive.”

The car hasn’t been the only thing pushing Sutton forwards. In recent seasons, Tom Ingram has emerged as Sutton's closest challenger. In fact, he's the only driver aside from Sutton to win multiple titles in the 2020s.

Last season Ingram took the crown in the final weekend of the season, leaving Sutton second. It's a result that has taunted him – deliberately – every day between then and now.

“The second place trophy has been sat on my bedside table since I got it, just to remind me that we're not taking that,” Sutton said. “Every time I go to sleep and every time I wake up, that's what I've been looking at. So yeah, we can replace that this year.”

And while Sutton says that the rivalry between the pair has helped him elevate his own game, he isn't solely focused on him, but everyone that has passed through the BTCC ranks in his 11 seasons in the series.

“I was actually reflecting on this myself a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “It's not just Tom. Yes, he's pushing me, but every driver's played a factor in the driver I am today.

“Every driver you come across, you have to change your approach, go about it differently. So understanding your rivals is a factor number one, and when they change that, that's when you've got to relearn.

“You never stand still. Yes, Tom's pushed me on. Jake [Hill] did over the years as well. Colin [Turkington] for sure. But every driver on the grid and everyone I've been up against since I joined in 2016 have all played a factor in the driver stood here now.”

Sutton – in a formidable partnership with Carrozza, who also serves as his race engineer – has done a lot of winning. His achievements read like someone at the end of a lengthy career, but he’s not done yet.

“As a driver, you always evolve,” he said. “There'll be a new driver, new car-driver combo that will come along, and something you've got to relearn.

“I never stand still. I'll go back and watch every race that we've gone and done this year and reflect on that, and I would always look to improve. That's been my mentality up to this point.

“So I'm not going to change that, and I keep evolving as a driver from where I am, and never stop chasing more. Whatever I do, it will always be the best capability. I never leave any stone unturned.”

Carrozza added, “We both hate losing as much as each other. So from an engineering and a driving point of view, if anyone beats you, you've got to come back twice as hard to beat them next time.”

As for that new(ish) car we mentioned? In the hatchback configuration, it had gone as far as it could. Its latest iteration is already a dominant force, so you’d be forgiven for thinking it was still a similar story, but Carrozza warns there’s still more to come

“The marginal gains become smaller and harder to find,” he admitted. “It takes you more and more time, more and more investment from NAPA, from Peter Osborne, to kind of find those little bits.

“We took a load of low-hanging fruit in the 2022 [and] 2023 seasons. That’s all gone. So it's slim pickings now, but there's still more to come.”

Sutton, however, is in a contract year. He’s still relatively young at 32, and the motorsport world is a big one. He’s dabbled in GTs recently, and a move to Australia's Supercars series has been touted in the past, but he wouldn’t be drawn on whether he would be staying in the series. If he does, with the championship record shored up, he has an eye on Jason Plato’s record of 97 race wins.

“I think the first thing is whether I'm back or not,” he pointed out. “Obviously if we are, then yeah, for sure you want to keep going.

“It's not confirmed. The end of contract is this year, so if I am [back], then we’ll sit down and work out what we want to go and achieve. But for sure, the big 97 wins with Jason is the target, or would be the target. But I’d need a fair few years in this championship.

“Obviously I've gone off and done some GT races as well. So yeah, we'll wait and see what's going on there.”

Before that though there’s one weekend of this season still to go at Brands Hatch on October 10-11. Sutton might be untouchable at the top – and NAPA Racing UK has also locked down the manufacturers'/constructors’ and teams' championships – but teammate Dan Cammish is in a close fight for second in the championship with Ingram, with Adam Morgan and Josh Cook also in the mix.

Sutton promises "a weekend of celebration", but he knows that in spite of that, he may well have an important job to do still. He won’t be taking it easy.

“We've wrapped up the three big ones that we wanted. Now yes, I'm going to probably fall into a role of a wingman for Dan Cam,” he said. “He's done it for me over the years, so it's just right and fits into repaying that favor if we're in that position to.

“And yes, I'm going to go there with no pressure, we're going to go there and enjoy it. We love Brands. The car's going to be stronger, I think. A few corners there that can really undo the deficit that we're going with in terms of the [boost] deployment.”

Independents’ battle goes to the wire

While Sutton and NAPA Racing UK have wrapped up the three big prizes and Dexter Patterson has already won the Jack Sears Trophy – for the best performing driver that started the season with no more than two podiums in the series – as well as the tense fight for second overall, independents’ honors are still on the line as well.

These days, no BTCC team is a factory effort in the typical sense of the word, but the bigger teams can opt to go for the manufacturers’/constructors’ championship. This year it comprises Alliance Racing (competing as NAPA Racing UK), EXELR8 Motorsport (Team VERTU), Speedworks Motorsport (Speedworks Corolla Racing), and CPRL (which started the season as Plato Racing). Drivers for every other team on the grid are deemed "independents" and thus can fight for that as well as the overall title.

LKQ Euro Car Parts with Power Maxed Racing driver Mikey Doble leads the charge with a 25-point lead over Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport's Gordon Shedden, with WSR's Charles Rainford, Silverstone Race 1 winner and Doble's Power Maxed Racing teammate Aiden Moffat, and Daryl DeLeon in another WSR BMW all also in with a shot.

Those drivers’ three teams are also locked in a similarly tight battle for the independent teams’ championship as well.

So while Sutton and NAPA ensured there'd be no typical final day decider in the main championship, this weekend's races at Brands Hatch on the GP layout still very much matter. And you can watch all three of Sunday's championship rounds, including the final race of the 30-round season, live on RACER Network and RACER+.