Defending British Touring Car champion Ash Sutton says he ‘won’t give up’ on retaining his title this year, even though he heads to the Subaru’s worst circuit with a bigger-than-ever points deficit to leader Colin Turkington.
Sutton has fallen to 51 points behind BMW’s Turkington after the last round at Knockhill, where a penalty in the second race, after an earlier win, derailed his championship challenge.
In his title winning year last season, Sutton failed to stand on the podium in either of the day’s three races, and the Subaru Levorg GT has never previously scored a podium at the Northamptonshire circuit.
“I won’t give up, but realistically it’s going to be hard,” said Sutton to the Adrian Flux blog. “I haven’t been this far away for a couple of meetings – I’ve always been 35 to 40 points away.
“Suddenly being 51 points behind is a kick in the backside, and to then go to our weakest track on the calendar, it hurts even more.
“This round isn’t going to be a points-maker. I’ve just got to try and pull something out of the bag at Silverstone, hope a bit of luck goes our way this weekend and get the most amount of points we can.”
Sutton is instead hoping that consistent points scorer Colin Turkington – who has just one win to Sutton’s five – will receive his own misfortune to bring the Subaru star back into the mix.
“If he plays his consistency game, it’s going to be very, very hard. But it’s British Touring Cars and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Colin might have a breakdown or be involved in an incident or make an error.
“In Colin’s position, he’s been comfortably bumbling around the front of the grid, consistently finishing fourth or fifth and he can win the Championship.
“Sometimes race wins aren’t always needed, but they are if you have a bad start to the season. When you start on the back foot like I did the only way to make that margin up is with wins.
“You know me, I never give up. I won’t change, and at the moment it’s working and the performance at Knockhill and the last few meetings were very strong.”