Ash Sutton left the opening round of the British Touring Car Championship at Donington Park in a positive mood, after a double win and a podium marked his best-ever start to a season.
Having qualified alongside NAPA Racing UK team-mate Dan Cammish on the front row of the grid on Saturday, Sutton got the better of his colleague at the first corner of the opening race, cutting back from the outside line to sweep into the lead down the Craner Curves.
As Sutton took victory in race one, it was long-time rival Tom Ingram who emerged as his main challenger.
That continued into race two, where Sutton doubled up from Ingram, before he drew the top six to be reversed on the grid for the final race – the smallest possible reversal.
In a battling drive, Sutton came through to take the final podium position in third, having come close to taking second from Ingram on the final lap.
“It’s a good way to kickstart the season with a decent amount of points on the board,” said Sutton to TouringCars.Net. “The trophy cabinet has been opened, which is nice. It’s not a bad way to kick start 2025.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever come away with this many points from the opening round. Normally every championship title we’ve won we’ve come away from round one with mixed results, so hopefully we’re going to change that!
“Going on the same tyre as Dan [in race one], on the softs, the mentality was to maximise what we could on that tyre, and he had the same goal.
“I jumped at the first opportunity I had. I managed to get a nice switchback and complete the move. Then we got caught out by the dread soft tyre [drop off] which everyone seems to have run in to today.
“In race two we made huge changes with the car after what we learned in race one. When Dan Cammish had his puncture, we realised that actually the car was not where we needed it to be for the track conditions and temperature.
“A big swing in race two made the car come alive and we could quite comfortably look after that gap and respond to Ingram.
“In race three we made a few more steps and maybe didn’t quite go as much as we needed, but to move forward from sixth to third with only one lap of hybrid…
“I had a nice little tussle at the end with Tom and he suddenly felt the pain that I felt in race one where you’re on the soft tyre and it suddenly falls away.
“It puts us in a good stead. It’s looking pretty nice at the minute.”