Laser Tools Racing will head into the 2020 British Touring Car Championship with Aiden Moffat and 2017 champion Ashley Sutton driving a pair of new Infiniti Q50 NGTC cars.
Moffat had a mixed season in 2019, starting the year in the Mercedes-Benz A-Class and a fourth place at the opening race at Brands Hatch. Four more top-ten finishes would come before the team switched to the Infiniti Q50 GT over the summer break. Moffat’s highest finish came at the penultimate round of the series as he took second place at the final race at Silverstone.
Moffat enters his seventh full season of BTCC in 2020 and is excited to have former-champion Sutton as his team-mate.
“I can’t wait to get going! I think it will be a very exciting year for myself and the team,” commented Moffat. “We are all really looking forward to expanding to a two-car team and I am particularly looking forward to working with my new team mate.
“For me, Ash is one of the best drivers on the grid and I’ll have my work cut out trying to keep up! But Ash is also a friend of mine and he’s someone I can work with. We can work together and bring the best out in each other.”
Sutton switches to Laser Tools Racing after three seasons with Team BMR under the banner of Adrian Flux Subaru Racing, driving the Subaru Levorg. 2019 marked his worse season since his debut in 2016, taking only one victory on the way to eighth in the championship.
“It’s a great pleasure to be involved in Laser Tools Racing and to be working alongside Aiden and everyone else involved in the team. It’s great to see this combination between the two of us just grow,” commented Sutton.
“I’m really looking forward to getting behind the wheel of the Infiniti — rear-wheel-drive is my comfort zone and with running a rear-wheel-drive car for the past three years I feel that we can roll over a lot that we’ve learned onto the Infiniti. And what we’ve actually got going on behind the scenes is very exciting.
” I haven’t had this excitement since 2017 — it’s giving me butterflies! We’ve got a lot to look forward to, the car has got a lot of potential and I think between the pair of us, we’re going to extract some good performance out of it”
Looking ahead to the new season Sutton is already envisioning success for the team.
“Aiden and I are going to be the team to be reckoned with, the advantage is that we are great friends away from the track, we have been on holiday together for example, and on track we’ve had our elbows out a few times, but now it’s time to knuckle-down as teammates and progress forward. The Infiniti is a great package and to be able to develop this is an exciting opportunity.”
Team principal Bob Moffat is happy to bring Sutton on board, revealing that it has taken a while to secure the services of the former champion.
“We have been speaking to Ashley Sutton for a number of months now, and we are delighted to welcome him into the Laser Tool Racing team,” commented Moffat Sr.
“Ash is going to bring a wealth of skill and experience to the team and I know that Aiden is already looking forward to working with him.”
After starting the season with the Mercedes, the team made a last minute switch during the summer break to bring the Infiniti Q50 back in to the series.
“For the 2019 season we made the decision to bring all race preparation and design work in-house to Laser Tools Racing. This paid great dividends and gave us the confidence to change cars mid-season.
“We built Aiden’s Infiniti up from a bare shell in just ten days and had it ready for the Snetterton tyre tests in July, and then racing at the same venue just two weeks later. The new car proved very quick at Knockhill and then Aiden achieved a worthy second place at Silverstone.
“This accelerated development showed that the Infiniti has considerable potential, so with Ashley Sutton joining the team, we decided to build two new cars which will be engineered with considerable improvements in weight distribution and stiffness.
“We will also be concentrating on the car’s aero package and indeed the car is booked into the wind tunnel at MIRA in early December for this development.
“The result should be two very competitive NGTC cars and with our ‘dream-team’ of young guns Moffat and Sutton we are all going into 2020 with a sense of great excitement and determination.”
