Reigning champion Ash Sutton was pleased with his progress throughout the opening weekend of the 2018 British Touring Car Championship, but believes the team still has ‘some groundwork’ to do.
The BMR driver struggled on Saturday and only managed to qualify his Subaru Levorg GT 18th on the grid for the opening race.
He progressed to seventh in race one, dropped to 12th in the middle contest, but came through to fourth after an impressive performance in the final encounter.
“Obviously we were disappointed after qualifying, starting P18 I think it was,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net.
“But we moved forward in all three races, so it was a very, very good weekend. I can’t complain really.”
The defending champion had a disastrous start to his title campaign at Brands Hatch Indy last year, scoring zero points with a 16th, a DNF and then a 23rd place finish.
With that in mind, he told TouringCars.net he felt pleased with a strong points haul this weekend.
“We came here to come away with more points, and we’ve done exactly that. So I’m really pleased with what we’ve achieved this weekend.”
Throughout the majority of last season, Sutton led the Subaru charge while his teammates struggled.
It was a similar story at the 2018 season opener, as teammate and two-time champion Jason Plato failed to score any points, with stablemate Josh Price also with no points to his name.
“I think there’s things we need to work on as a team not just as an individual car,” explained Sutton.
“We’re still not a completely happy camp in my side of the garage, so I think we’ve got some groundwork to do but that doesn’t mean it can’t be achieved.”