As championship leader, Sutton was running the minimum hybrid boost allowance of one second per lap at a minimum speed of 135mph on his Motorbase Performance-run Ford Focus ST, yet he was still able to put himself at the front.
The achievement means that the NAPA Racing-liveried Focus squad has headed qualifying at all four rounds so far this season.
Free practice pacesetter Josh Cook had jumped to the top of the times in his BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R just past the halfway point, but four minutes later Sutton bettered that effort by a quarter of a second – he eventually defeated reigning champion Tom Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N by 0.210 seconds.
“It’s just a phenomenal job by everyone at the team,” said Sutton. “The car’s mega.
“We had a great car here last year, and this year we’ve only made the car better.
“All day we’ve been refining it and fine-tuning it, and getting myself in a good place for qualifying – the car was on rails.”
Ingram set his time during a window of a few minutes after Dan Cammish had clouted the tyre stack at the left-handed part of the chicane and shifted it away from the apex.
The session was then red-flagged with two and a half minutes on the clock and restarted for a further five minutes, but there weren’t any significant improvements at the front. Three cars then speared off the road and onto the grass at the fast Noble kink, due to fluid dropped on the track by Aron Taylor-Smith’s Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra.
Ingram, allowed 3s of hybrid per lap at a minimum 135mph, was satisfied with his front-row position, and explained that he had traffic on his best lap – ironically the culprit was Sutton.
Cook, whose free practice best remained unbeaten by anyone in qualifying, was allowed the full 15s/115mph of hybrid and was mystified to be third: “I don’t know if it’s fluid down or something from the Minis [the Mini Se7ens raced just before], but we have the car set-up so we’re on the edge and we just had no grip at all.”
Rookie Mikey Doble did a tremendous job to put in by far his best qualifying effort, the PMR Vauxhall racer taking fourth place – another to improve in the window when the chicane tyre stack was out of place.
Jake Hill once again headed the West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport brigade in fifth, and team-mate Colin Turkington will share the third row with him, the four-time champion with slightly less hybrid use.
On a terrific day for Power Maxed, Andrew Watson pipped Taylor-Smith as all three of the Astras ended up in the top eight – the TOCA customer engines run by this team and the Team Hard Cupra Leons have been allowed 0.2 bar more boost this weekend.
Cammish ended up ninth in his Motorbase Ford, with Rory Butcher completing the top 10 in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla.
No fewer than 33 laptimes among 17 drivers were deleted due to track limits breaches at Church Corner, although the only competitor to lose a top-10 starting slot was Dan Rowbottom, the Motorbase Ford man dropping from eighth to 14th.
The red, white and blue-painted section of kerb on the exit of Church onto which drivers are allowed to run, which is only around a wheel’s width in depth, is to be effectively doubled overnight before Sunday’s racing.
BTCC Thruxton Qualifying Results:
| Cla | Driver | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
 Ashley Sutton |
1'15.489 | |
| 2 |
Tom Ingram |
1'15.699 | 0.210 |
| 3 |
Josh Cook |
1'15.735 | 0.246 |
| 4 | Mikey Doble | 1'15.895 | 0.406 |
| 5 |
Jake Hill |
1'15.928 | 0.439 |
| 6 |
Colin Turkington |
1'16.017 | 0.528 |
| 7 |
Andrew Watson |
1'16.034 | 0.545 |
| 8 |
 Aron Taylor-Smith |
1'16.107 | 0.618 |
| 9 |
Dan Cammish |
1'16.112 | 0.623 |
| 10 |
Rory Butcher |
1'16.188 | 0.699 |
| 11 |
Ricky Collard |
1'16.213 | 0.724 |
| 12 |
Daniel Lloyd |
1'16.371 | 0.882 |
| 13 | Bobby Thompson | 1'16.427 | 0.938 |
| 14 |
Daniel Rowbottom |
1'16.568 | 1.079 |
| 15 |
Adam Morgan |
1'16.585 | 1.096 |
| 16 |
Stephen Jelley |
1'16.618 | 1.129 |
| 17 |
Aiden Moffat |
1'16.669 | 1.180 |
| 18 |
Tom Chilton |
1'16.907 | 1.418 |
| 19 | Ronan Pearson | 1'16.940 | 1.451 |
| 20 |
Sam Osborne |
1'16.972 | 1.483 |
| 21 | Dexter Patterson | 1'17.006 | 1.517 |
| 22 | George Gamble | 1'17.530 | 2.041 |
| 23 | Jack Butel | 1'17.594 | 2.105 |
| 24 | Will Powell | 1'17.967 | 2.478 |
| 25 | Nicolas Hamilton | 1'18.105 | 2.616 |
| 26 | Jade Edwards | 1'18.440 | 2.951 |
| 27 | Nick Halstead | 1'19.126 | 3.637 |
| View full results | |||
