The three-time champion wrung everything out of himself and his Motorbase Performance-run Ford Focus ST in the Q2 top-10 shootout to pip the One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R of Josh Cook by 0.006 seconds.
Qualifying had started on a wet track with the entire field on grooved tyres, but at the halfway point former World Touring Car champion Rob Huff was the first to emerge on the soft-compound slick Goodyears, and the crossover point soon emerged.
The One Motorsport Hondas had quickly emulated Huff, with Cook and Aiden Moffat taking turns at the top of the times.
But conditions were still tricky, as Thruxton poleman Dan Cammish found his Motorbase Ford snapping off the road at Butchers while he sat on provisional pole.
The damage from his trip across the grass sidelined him for the remainder of the session, dropping him to 23rd in the final order.
An off for Stephen Jelley’s West Surrey Racing BMW in the same vicinity caused a red flag during the final minute, and the clock was reset to five minutes remaining.
Rory Butcher and his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla were fastest at this stage, but he failed to improve during the final five minutes and fell to sixth.
Cook set the quickest time, but this was deleted for a track-limits transgression so it was Jake Hill and his WSR BMW that finally topped Q1, 0.090 seconds clear of Cook’s fastest legal effort.
A flapping front splitter on Hill’s BMW betrayed an off earlier in the session that ripped off the floor, so he counted himself fortunate to be able to get back into the fray.
Cook, with 11 seconds of hybrid per lap available to him at a minimum of 125km/h, looked good for pole as Q2 entered its closing stages.
But Sutton, with the minimum 1s hybrid at 135km/h, pulled off a sublime effort to keep up the NAPA-liveried Fords’ run of every single pole position in 2023 – the Focuses now on seven out of seven.
Source: Autosport