Cook Conquers the Damp
Josh Cook is a man who simply refuses to be ordinary at certain circuits. Pole in qualifying. Win in the qualifying race on Saturday. Then victory in Round 22 on a greasy, treacherous Croft surface that caught out half the grid. Tom Ingram actually crossed the line first but copped a five-second penalty for track limits, dropping him to third behind Cook and Sutton. That is a brutal way to lose a win and Ingram will be furious with himself. Cook though? Clinical. He survived a last-corner lunge from Sutton to take the flag and looked every inch the Croft specialist he has always been. That is his second pole and second win of 2026 and both have come at circuits where he has serious pedigree.
Sutton on Hards. In the Damp. Still Won.
Round 23 was the moment that should convince anyone still doubting this title race is already decided. Ash Sutton started on hard tyres on a damp track and won the race. Hard tyres. Damp track. Won. He passed Cook around the outside into Tower on the opening lap and pulled away from there. That is now eight wins from 24 rounds in 2026 and the kind of compound-defying performance that has become his signature move this season. The gap at the top of the championship is now 115 points with two weekends remaining. He could wrap up a record-breaking fifth title at Silverstone later this month. Let that number sit with you for a second. The man is rewriting the history books in real time and nobody on this grid has an answer for him. He also moved to fifth on the all-time BTCC wins list, overtaking some properly legendary names to get there.
Doble Stays Clean While Everyone Else Collides
Round 24 was absolute bedlam. Mikey Doble led from reversed-grid pole and drove a flawless race to take his second win of the season for Power Maxed Racing. That alone would be worth celebrating. What made it extraordinary was the carnage behind him. Sutton, Ingram and Ricky Collard were all involved in incidents and failed to finish. Dan Cammish survived but limped home well off the pace. Doble just kept his head down, hit his marks and let the chaos happen in his mirrors. Tom Chilton grabbed second and Gordon Shedden took third, which was a lovely result for the three-time champion who seems to thrive when the race around him goes sideways. For Doble, this was further proof that the 2026 Audi package is a genuine threat on any given weekend. Two wins and growing confidence. Power Maxed will fancy their chances at Silverstone too.
Ingram's Track Limits Penalty Will Sting
Tom Ingram taking the chequered flag first in Round 22 and then losing the win to a five-second track limits penalty is one of those results that looks harmless on paper but could matter enormously in context. Croft has always been a circuit where track limits are aggressively policed. He ended up third instead of first and that is a 12-point swing he handed away at a stage of the season where he desperately needs maximum returns. His championship hopes are already paper-thin given Sutton's lead and gifting points like that makes the mountain even steeper. The EXCELR8 Hyundai had genuine pace all weekend and Ingram was right in the thick of every race, so the speed is there. The margins just keep going against him.
The Croft Finale Was Brutal
I cannot stress enough how wild that final race was. Three of the top four in the championship standings were taken out in separate incidents. Sutton, Ingram and Collard all retired. When was the last time a single BTCC race eliminated that many title contenders at once? Cammish was the only one of the leading four to finish and he will have taken whatever points he could from a day that turned ugly. The stewards had their work cut out. If any penalty points on licences were handed out from those incidents, they could have serious implications heading into the final two rounds. Getting a race ban at this stage of the season would be catastrophic for anyone still harbouring title ambitions, however slim.
Cammish Qualified Fastest but Saturday Belonged to Cook
Dan Cammish topped qualifying at his home circuit and looked like the man to beat all through Saturday morning. But Cook outran him in the qualifying race, applying early pressure before pulling clear in the second half of the sprint. Cammish settled for second and will have been quietly pleased with the points haul, especially with the championship picture being what it is. He heads to Silverstone sitting inside the top four. The Alliance Racing Ford was quick in every session at Croft and the team clearly had the setup dialled in for North Yorkshire. Whether that translates to Silverstone's very different layout is another question.
CPRL Keep Rolling
Dan Rowbottom continued CPRL's remarkable run of form by topping free practice at Croft. The Mercedes outfit has been transformed since Donington Park and now arrives at every circuit expecting to fight at the front. Adam Morgan won five times across the previous two weekends including qualifying races and Rowbottom has been right there with him. The team that emerged from the ashes of Plato Racing's administration has become one of the stories of the season. Both drivers look settled and the car is clearly quick in all conditions. If they maintain this trajectory through the final two rounds they could finish the year as the form team of the second half of the season.
The Championship Maths
Let's lay it out plainly. Sutton leads by 115 points with a maximum of roughly 134 still available across Silverstone and Brands Hatch. He could clinch the title at Silverstone if results go his way. A fifth BTCC championship would break the record he currently shares and cement him as the greatest touring car driver of the modern era. Ingram and Cammish are the nearest challengers but both need Sutton to have a catastrophic weekend just to get within range. After Croft, where Sutton won one race and only failed to score in the finale because of a crash that was not entirely his making, the odds of that happening feel vanishingly small. This title race has been a procession dressed up in spectacular individual races and the coronation is coming soon.
Fan Reaction
The BTCC community was buzzing all weekend. Cook winning in the wet divided nobody. The man is a fan favourite and his Croft record speaks for itself. Sutton's hard-tyre heroics in Round 23 drew a mixture of admiration and resigned sighs from supporters of other drivers. But the real talking point was that final race. Social media was a wall of replays and arguments about who was at fault in the various incidents. Some fans loved the chaos. Others felt the standard of driving in the reversed-grid race was below what you expect at this level. Both camps have a point. What nobody disputed was Doble's quality. The lad drove a perfect race while the world burned around him and earned every bit of praise that came his way.