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.
Source: Autosport