Laser Tools Racing’s Ash Sutton is confident of replicating his race one victory despite carrying extra success ballast aboard his Infiniti in the second British Touring Car Championship encounter at Knockhill.
The 2017 champion gave Infiniti their maiden series pole position yesterday, and would convert that into a memorable home victory for the Scottish squad after fending off reigning champion Colin Turkington.
Sutton made good his escape at the start of the race, building an advantage of 1.7 seconds before a safety car intervention brought the gap between him and his title rival Turkington down to a matter of seconds.
When the race restarted, Turkington applied pressure but it was Sutton who would take the victory and fastest lap to cut the points deficit to just 13 points heading into race two.
“It’s fantastic to convert that pole into a win,” Sutton told ITV. “Colin was there, but we managed to hold that sensible gap that he required so he couldn’t put a move in.
“The initial plan was to just break clear and the opening lap is prime time to do that when everyone squabbles, but the safety car closed that down.
“It was a case of then just trying to get a clean restart, and then we managed that gap from that point onwards. He obviously applied a little bit of pressure into the hairpin a couple of times but it was under control shall we say.”
With Sutton gaining six kilograms more success ballast for race two as Turkington sheds the same amount of weight, Sutton is confident of doubling up in the second contest at 13:30 BST.
“We’re pretty much swapping weight aren’t we now? I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact, it’s only six kilos more. I feel like we’ve always managed weight quite well – me as a driver – and the team in terms of engineering and setting it up.
“We’ve got a nice little package when it comes to carrying ballast, so I’m confident, but it’s going to be a little bit harder.”