Ash Sutton arrived at Silverstone fully expecting to complete his fifth drivers’ title to make him the outright leader of championships, given he had a 115 point lead over his teammate, and nearest rival, Dan Cammish. Tom Ingram remained in the hunt for the runner-up spot, although he trailed Cammish by eight points.

Qualifying Race

Daryl De Leon blasted his BMW off the line ahead of Mikey Doble and Sutton was spun around to compete a full 360 from his mid-pack starting position. Aiden Moffat moved up to third early on after a pass on Tom Chilton, who had a new M-Sport engine for the event.

On the same lap, Doble regained the lead and set off for victory from De Leon, who subsequently dropped to fourth for Sunday’s grid, with Moffat and Chilton ahead of him. Dan Lloyd and Josh Cook completed row three, but Ingram was twelfth, Sutton fourteenth and Cammish was a place further back.

Race One: 5.5/10 – Aiden Moffat*, Mikey Doble, Tom Chilton, Josh Cook

• On a damp track with light rain in the air, the top six all started on the soft tyre and Moffat took the lead off the line with De Leon yo-yoing with second before settling for third at the end of the lap. However, on the next lap, there was more battling for De Leon, but this time with Chilton to retain third and it was a battle he ultimately lost. 
• Sutton had been ninth, but after contact with Ingram, as a result of Gordon Shedden’s drama, he found himself thirteenth at the end of lap 2. The following couple of laps saw the majority of the field driving around very closely together, which helped people like Dan Rowbottom move up seven places to tenth from the start of the race.
• By lap 8, Doble was quite close to Moffat, who was now on his last track limits warning and it stayed like that for several laps. 
• Chris Smiley was running well and in overtaking Sutton, it was his tenth position gained, but after running wide when trying to overtake Cammish, who pitted later anyway, Sutton got back in front. It took until lap 21 for Smiley to reclaim the place and not getting that one extra point meant that Sutton needed to wait to claim the title as he finished twelfth.
• Cook had a steady race and after he overtook De Leon late in proceedings, he thought he had claimed a podium position, as Moffat had incurred a track limits penalty. However, Moffat retained his victory on appeal, as it was proved that he had nowhere to go in avoiding BTCC debutant Osamu Kawashima. It was Moffat’s first victory since the opening meeting of the 2024 season. 
• Dexter Patterson’s eighteenth position secured him the Jack Sears Trophy, as he topped the table of the ten drivers who have competed in it this season.

Race Two: 6/10 – Ash Sutton, Adam Morgan, Charles Rainford

• Moffat just retained the lead off the line from Chilton, while De Leon was able to get ahead of Doble. By the end of lap 2, Sutton was stupendously already up to fourth and ahead of Doble. 
• The top four ran closely for a couple of laps, but everyone knew what was coming. Initially, De Leon took the lead at Brooklands, while Sutton was taking third and then second. However, after a lunge at Copse, Sutton took the lead and had made it to the front in eight laps. 
• Charles Rainford and Moffat had been battling for a while, with Rainford finally getting the place, while there was a sandwich between Shedden, Doble and Árón Taylor-Smith that involved lots of boost being deployed and Taylor-Smith winning out for eighth. 
• Adam Morgan, who started eighth, had been making steady progress and he blasted by De Leon for second on lap 14, before De Leon lost out on the final podium spot to teammate Rainford with a few laps to go. 
• In the battle for second in the championship, Cammish had an amazing recovery from twenty-first on the grid to sixth, while some late moves saw Ingram finish eighth. However, this race, like the season, was about the dominance of unstoppable Sutton, who claimed his fifth drivers’ crown.

Race Three: 7/10 – Tom Ingram, Ash Sutton, Aiden Moffat

• For a rather wet third race of the day, ball nine was drawn from the bowl which promoted race one winner, Moffat, back to the front of the grid where he was joined by Ingram, Taylor-Smith and Cammish.
• In a chaotic opening lap, Cammish was very slow off the line, with Taylor-Smith hitting the front before contact with Moffat, which then helped Rowbottom close up to them and he then took the lead, while Moffat recovered back to third. However, on the second lap, Moffat went through on Taylor-Smith and he was followed by Ingram. 
• On lap 4, Sutton was fourth with a move on Taylor-Smith, but it soon became apparent that leader Rowbottom was struggling to see with a misting issue. Over the next few laps, Rowbottom fell behind Moffat, Ingram and Sutton on a very wet track despite battling hard. 
• On lap 11, Ingram dived down the inside of Moffat for the lead, but the Scot tried his very best to not relinquish the position before eventually losing out. Worse was to come a couple of laps later for Moffat as Sutton also found a way by too. 
• Some late action saw Shedden attempting to take third from Moffat, but after running wide it gave Moffat some breathing space. Behind him, Cammish made some late passes, but it was his runner up rival Ingram that cruised home to victory as incredibly, every car finished despite the conditions. 

He was always going to do it in style, wasn’t he? There was certainly an air of ‘I’ll just wait’ in race one from Sutton as he didn’t really want to become the most successful champion of all time in BTCC by crossing the line eleventh. Most normal people wouldn’t be able to win from eleventh on the grid without many factors going their way, but Sutton isn’t normal and nor is his car. You always knew that on the Silverstone track where the impact of the boost was evident all day, that he’d fire through to win. The fact that he was at the front by lap 9 was crazy. 

It has been an incredible season for Sutton and his car has consistently been set up perfectly to suit his driving style. It has been an extremely long time since someone has won a championship with four races remaining, albeit he could have won it with five had he wanted to. Alain Menu was the last driver to win the championship in the penultimate round, back in 1997, albeit in a 24 race season. 

Also enjoying the winning feeling at Silverstone was Patterson, who secured the Jack Sears Trophy title with a meeting to spare too. He now has an unassailable lead over Lewis Selby and he has shown the Audi S3 Saloon has been a pretty competitive car in its debut season. 

This was, of course, backed-up by Moffat’s strongest BTCC meeting in many a year. It was great to see him doing so well again and given his experience, he should be performing at a higher level more often.

However, it will take quite some turnaround for Moffat to be the Independent champion this year as he is fourth, but his other teammate Doble is in the box seat with a current twenty five point gap over Shedden. Rainford is a few points further back, but heading to Brands Hatch GP, you have to think it is Doble’s to lose. 

Another battle at Brands will be the one for the runner up spot. After Ingram’s victory in the final race, he edged ahead of Cammish once again, but that of course will mean he will have less boost available to him in qualifying and race one compared to Cammish. Sutton will no doubt be going all out to help Cammish, but whether any of Ingram’s stablemates will be in a position to help out remains to be seen.

2026 BTCC driver standings after 27 rounds

1.	Ashley Sutton	468 points 🏆
2.	Tom Ingram	336
3.	Dan Cammish	331
4.	Adam Morgan	267
5.	Josh Cook	261
6.	Dan Rowbottom	257