Ash Sutton has claimed his third win of the 2021 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) to gain further ground on his rivals after a last lap capitalisation on Colin Turkington who lead for most of the race.
The duo battled it out for most of the race at Knockhill with a few safety cars not allowing Sutton through but a mistake handed him the race win as Turkington went out wide into the gravel on the final lap allowing the Infiniti Q50 to surge through.
This ahead of Jake Hill, Josh Cook, Gordon Shedden, Tom Ingram, Senna Proctor, Jason Plato, Stephen Jelley and Carl Boardley who round out the top ten after another drama filled race.
Turkington got off the line well as Smiley had a nightmare start as the rest of the grid had to dodge the stranded Hyundai i30N which meant Hamilton went into the wall and the safety car came out.
At the time, the Team BMW driver led Cook and Sutton but the latter was putting pressure on the ballast laden Honda Civic of Cook as they restarted and got past into second as he set his sights on Turkington.
He got right there onto the tail of his championship rival on Lap 18/27 and got round him but didn’t have the run onto the hairpin which allowed Turkington to squeeze him out onto the gravel and immediately regain the place.
Sutton needed to regroup and close back onto Turkington but while he would have hoped Hill would gain onto the leading group to put pressure onto Sutton, it wasn’t happening immediately with the leading duo still getting away.
A brilliant battle was rearing its head further down with Moffat defending seventh while Butcher and Ingram were battling it out but this soon ended as Butcher and Moffat had contact sending the Corolla into the barrier and bringing out the Safety Car.
Parfitt spun out and this disrupted the restart with Hill unable to overtake when the safety car came in holding him, Cook and Shedden off from attacking the leaders.
But still Turkington had resolve up until the one of the final chicanes as he ran wide allowing Sutton his only chance to win through and he did to take the lead and the chequered flag.
In terms of reversed grid, Stephen Jelley will once again head onto pole ahead of Jason Plato who will look to head one step closer to 100 wins ahead of Senna Proctor, Tom Ingram with Turkington and Sutton lining up 8th and 9th with of course full ballast on board.
Results in full to follow