NAPA Racing UK’s Ash Sutton tightens his grip on the British Touring Car Championship title battle after romping to a fifth pole position in qualifying at Donington Park.
With red-flags and changeable conditions hampering the day’s practice running, the pecking order remained something of an unknown heading into qualifying for round 22 of the series.
Defending champion Tom Ingram sat at the top of the times for much of the session after a number of hot-laps saw the Hyundai i30N driver lead Sutton as the shootout entered its final minutes.
However, Sutton set the timesheets alight with eight-minutes of the session to go and produced a lap in the 1’33.1s, putting the points leader over 0.3s ahead of his closest title rival Ingram in second.
Ingram did manage to respond and improved to a 1’33.336s before Sutton went even faster to extend his advantage over the Hyundai driver with a 1’33.154s lap.
Toyota Gazoo Racing UK’s Ricky Collard produced another strong qualifying effort to secure a place on the second row of the grid with the third fastest time, narrowly beating four-time champion Colin Turkington, who had to settle for fourth.
Having languished around seventh for most of the session, Team BMW’s Turkington rose up to third late in the session before falling behind Collard’s last-gasp effort for third.
Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall’s Aron Taylor-Smith navigated his way to a strong top-five qualifying result with the fifth fastest time and shares the third row of the grid with BMWs Jake Hill in sixth.
One Motorsport’s Josh Cook set the seventh fastest time aboard his Honda Civic Type-R, while Adam Morgan, Ronan Pearson and Dan Rowbottom completed the remainder of the top-ten race one grid order in eighth, ninth and tenth.
Keyword: BTCC: Sutton romps to pole position at Donington Park