Ashley Sutton hit out at driving standards from the opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship meeting at Brands Hatch on a bruising weekend for Team BMR.
Last year’s Jack Sears Trophy winner failed to pick up a point in the opening three races of the season in Kent, the Subaru squad’s best result being Jason Plato‘s 12th place in race one of the day.
Plato’s weekend ended early after a sizeable collision with the pit wall at the start of race two, Sutton left unipressed by driving standards at times during the weekend.
“To put it kindly, it felt like some people forgot to put their brains in from the point of view of race craft”, Sutton told The Checkered Flag after an eventful opening meeting. “You can have some brilliant racing with people throughout the grid, but it got silly sometimes.”
Sutton himself graciously accepted a part in accidents he felt responsible for, picking up an official reprimand and two penalty points after incidents with Will Burns and Jeff Smith.
He added “I’ll put my hands up and admit there were a few that I have to own up to, but I’ve sorted those out with the drivers.”
Sutton expects Subaru’s performance to improve dramatically at Donington Park on 15/16 April, a wet qualifying session putting them on the back foot at Brands Hatch.
“On the whole the car’s got potential. It hasn’t shown its true potential this weekend, but it still gave us signs as a team. I’ve had a bad weekend, but we made the most of the bad situation.
“Since qualifying, I think that really summed it up. In FP2, we were down towards the bottom in the classification, which showed where we’ve come from really.
“I think we’re going to come back with a big bang. We’re going to try and get a bit more testing in throughout the season to work out what’s gone wrong. Up until now, we’ve been on rails.”
