Dan Cammish commits to ‘playing rear gunner’ for Ash Sutton

Dan Cammish says he will act as the ‘rear gunner’ for NAPA Racing UK team-mate Ash Sutton in Sunday’s season finale British Touring Car Championship races at Brands Hatch.

Cammish has qualified in fourth for the opening race on the Grand Prix circuit, just 0.017 seconds behind team-mate and championship leader Sutton.

It means that Cammish, who had tried to help Sutton in qualifying before both realised they would be faster focussing on their own laps, will have the chief aim of keeping MB Motorsport’s Jake Hill at bay in fifth.

The 33-year-old has committed himself to working in the best interests of the team, but admits he would like to end his year with some silverware as well.

“I tried to tow Ash on the first run, and it didn’t quite have the effect we hoped. It’s also quite distracting when you’ve got someone that close to you, so we chose to go it alone after that and we both did better laps that counted, so that worked out well,” said Cammish to TouringCars.Net.

“It sets the tone for my day a little bit because obviously I can’t really go past Ash. Keeping Jake behind is 100% going to be my game plan. He’ll know it and everyone around us knows it, there’s no way of hiding that fact.

“I’m going to do my best to play rear gunner to Ash whilst hopefully he goes off after [Tom] Ingram. It’s going to be interesting.

“Everyone has got their strengths. We’ll be strong over the first couple of laps, Jake won’t be as strong and then he’ll come really strong [later in the race]. It’s going to be a big ask tomorrow.

“I certainly don’t want to be involved in any way where it’s over the limit of what’s acceptable. It’s not me and it’s not what I want to be linked with.

“At the end of the day, I will do everything in my power to help within the rule book. If I can get in amongst it, then ultimately I want podiums for myself as well. It’s not been my best year – we’ve had massive ups and downs and I want to finish high for all my guys that have worked so hard so we can come back stronger next year.”

Cammish admitted that he was somewhat stunned by the pace pole-sitter Ingram had shown, with the Excelr8 Motorsport driver being four tenths of a second clear of anyone else.

“It’s so marginal, three drivers all within a small fraction of a second. Ash did a great job and as a team we’re third and fourth, ahead of Hill, which is fantastic, but a chunk behind Ingram who’s going at a different speed.

“I don’t see how we combat that unless we fit some NOS [nitrous oxide] under the bonnet. I don’t know what we need to do.

“When you’ve got four, five, six guys covered by hundredths and you’ve got one guy four tenths up the road, it’s just incredible.

“I think we’re all anxious to see his onboard to see where he makes it up because it’s not like the rest of us haven’t been successful around here.”