Ash Sutton wouldn’t be drawn on his 2019 plans after a successful debut outing in TCR Europe at Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona this weekend [20-21 October].
The 2017 British Touring Car Champion denied Mikel Azcona the title a round early with a bold move at Turn 12 to seize fourth in the opener, before following it up with a maiden overseas podium in the WestCoast Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI.
“Who knows?,” said Sutton. “Watch this space, I think…
“TCR itself is great. The racing is very good, I’ve tried two cars – the Honda and the Volkswagen. All cars are going to have their ‘pros’ and ‘cons’, but as an overall I’ve loved both cars.
“The Volkswagen has been especially kind to me this weekend, it’s treated me well. I’m very pleased with what we’ve gotten from the event and I can’t thank WestCoast, Volkswagen and all our sponsors enough.”
Reflecting on the weekend as a whole, Sutton was elated with his performance despite the 20 kilograms of ballast as a new entry and only have 12 new Yokohama tyres available.
“It was good to end the weekend with a podium,” said Sutton.
“This weekend was all about WestCoast Racing and Volkswagen and coming over here to put on a show for them and deliver some results.
“We had to be a little bit cautious in some respects when it came to the racing. We did what we could in qualifying with the tyre scenario – we didn’t have as many available to us as the others and carrying the extra 20 kilos as a new entry obviously hinders us a little bit.
“We played it safe in the opening race to work out where we strong, assess the other driver’s tactics and so on before getting stuck in towards the end to move up a couple of places.
“Today it was a different strategy. We went on the attack straight away, set the fastest lap in the chase for second, but unfortunately we didn’t quite have enough left to get it.
“We had to be careful, we were in a bit of a ‘teammate sandwich’ [between Nagy and Michelisz] so I knew there were going to be some games going on – if I made a move that didn’t work I was soon going to be in fourth so we settled for third.”