BTCC:Sutton secures third successive double victory with dominant race two win
Three-time British Touring Car champion Ash Sutton has secured an historic third consecutive double victory after taking the race two honours ahead of Tom Ingram at Thruxton.
In a near mirror image of race one, Sutton made the perfect launch from pole position and quickly galloped away into a lead in which he would never relinquish.
This time, defending champion Ingram did threaten to close in on the NAPA Racing Ford Focus midway through the race, and reduced Sutton's lead to just under a second.
However, Sutton appeared unflustered and subsequently rebuilt the gap to an eventual 2.2s race winning margin ahead of the EXCERL8 Motorsport Hyundai i30N.
Sutton’s sixth victory of 2023 means he has now won more than half of the races on offer so far this season after taking an unprecedented third successive double victory.
One Motorsport's Josh Cook once again threatened to move past Ingram early in the race, but the Honda Civic Type-R driver's attack gradually faded as the race progressed. Cook crossed the line over four-seconds adrift of Ingram by the end of the race.
Laser Tools Racing's Jake Hill found himself latched onto the Ingram and Cook early in the race, and looked a likely candidate to step onto the podium for the first time this weekend.
Despite early promise, Hill's BMW 330e M Sport was unable to keep pace as the WSR driver fell further towards the clutches of the charging Dan Cammish as the laps ticked away.
Hill eventually held onto fourth ahead of Cammish in fifth.
Team BMW's Colin Turkington spent the near entirety of the race glued to the rear of Rory Butcher's Toyota Corolla, with the four=time champion finally making the decisive move for sixth in the dying stages of the race.
Butcher settled for seventh, while Aron Taylor-Smith, Ricky Collard and Aiden Moffat completed the remainder of the top-ten order in eighth, ninth and tenth.
