Ashley Sutton fought to his and Team BMR‘s first win of the 2017 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship season in the second race at Oulton Park.
The Subaru Levorg GT followed pole-sitter Andrew Jordan into Old Hall for the first time, demoting Matt Neal to third spot before the Honda Civic Type-R dropped to fourth behind Rob Collard at Cascades.
Sutton swiftly started his chase of Jordan and eased alongside the BMW 125i heading out of the Island hairpin on lap two, surviving two wheels on the grass to lunge inside at Knickerbrook to grab the lead.
It would be one that he would never surrender, his second BTCC race win and Subaru’s first of the year confirmed by a margin of just over a second.
Carrying the maximum 75kg success ballast, Jordan soon came under pressure from BMW team-mate Collard for second. The latter made his move exiting Druids on lap four, leaving him under attack from the Halfords Yuasa Racing duo of Neal and Gordon Shedden.
Neal inched inside the BMW two laps later heading out of the final corner, Shedden cutting back inside to follow his team-mate through after the trio ran briefly three abreast.
The Hondas soon swapped places at Lodge and Shedden joined Sutton and Collard on the podium, also taking over the championship lead in the process. The change came at the expense of Tom Ingram, who again retired from the race after damage caused by a collision at the hairpin with James Cole‘s Subaru Levorg GT.
Neal finished fourth ahead of Jordan, Josh Cook claiming sixth place for Maximum Motorsport ahead of Mat Jackson in the similar Ford Focus ST but in Motorsbase colours.
Rob Austin was next up for Toyota, while Team HARD rounded out the top 10 with Jake Hill and Michael Epps.
Aiden Moffat meanwhile could not improve on his fourth place in race one, instead spinning out after a lurid moment at Cascades on lap four.
Senna Proctor crossed the line backwards for Power Maxed Racing, 18th after collecting the barriers along the way following contact.
Photo: BTCC Media
