Sutton storms to dominant race one victory at Donington

Despite starting from pole position, the three-time champion briefly lost the lead at the start of the race and fell down to third behind title-rival Tom Ingram and Toyota's Ricky Collard.

However, Sutton fought his way back into the lead by as early as lap two after scything his way past Collard between the Old Hairpin and Schwantz Curve before out-braking Ingram on the inside of the Melbourne Hairpin

From that point onwards, Sutton was in a class of own as the Ford Focus ST driver relentlessly marched away from the defending champion to an eventual 7.1s winning margin for a 36th career BTCC victory.

As a result, Sutton has strengthened his vice-like grip on the title race with a 42-point advantage over Hyundai driver in Ingram.

After losing the lead to Sutton on lap two, second place looked almost looked a formality for reigning champion Ingram. However, the EXCELR8 Motorsport driver had to call upon all of his defensive capabilities after a sensational late-race charge saw Jake Hill rapidly rise up the order and challenge for second position.

Hill had languished in seventh for the opening half of the race, but the Laser Tools Racing driver ignited his charge during latter stages of the race, starting with a routine move around the outside of Josh Cook for sixth position.

The BMW driver subsequently made easy work of passing Aron Taylor-Smith, Colin Turkington and Ricky Collard, which moved Hill up to third in the closing stages.

Ingram's once comfortable cushion back to third was quickly eroded by Hill, but the Hyundai driver was inch perfect in defence and held onto second by just 0.049s as the pair crossed line.

Collard and Turkington completed the top-five order in fourth and fifth, while Taylor-Smith secured sixth for the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall squad.

Cook wound up seventh for One Motorsport, as Dan Rowbottom, Andrew Watson and Tom Chilton completed the remainder of the top-ten order.