As any decent chef will explain, making the perfect meal is not just about having the right ingredients. It is about how the food is prepared and cooked as well as the quality of the products that are used.
The blend of Motorbase Performance (rebranded Alliance Racing towards the end of the season), NAPA UK’s budget and the skills of engineer Antonio Carrozza and Ash Sutton were thrown into the British Touring Car Championship melting pot at the start of 2022. With a year to prove the mixture, it came out of the oven ready to delight in 2023.
The way Sutton cooked up the BTCC crown – his record-equalling fourth – over the course of the 30-race campaign had onlookers scratching their heads. How, they asked, could one man be so dominant?
The answer lays in the preparations of those ingredients and the skill of the driver himself. The pre-season testing that Motorbase was able to perform, underpinned by the financial support of NAPA, enabled the engineering solutions that they have devised during the runners up campaign the year before. The garnish was a racer performing at the peak of his considerable abilities.
What was clear was that Sutton was able to come to each meeting with a car that needed very little refinement. The evidence of that lays in the six pole positions. He was able to roll the car out of the truck on Saturdays with a set-up that enabled him go on the attack from the outset.
While the driver earned the plaudits when he crossed the line first, it was the brainpower that went into dialling the car in in
