How the BTCC beat Covid and delivered a vintage season

TH: I’ve been around the paddock since 1987, and this time there was no sense of occasion or atmosphere at all. Most of my weekends are usually spent roaming around talking to everybody, being an insider as to what’s going on. I felt so remote. But once the racing started and we were talking about what we were seeing on the screens, it was exactly the same.

The crowds are central to the BTCC, but this year they couldn’t be there. What was it like for you, Alan?

AG: It was surreal, particularly for the first few meetings. As Tim says, there was no atmosphere, although the teams just got on with it and there was a good bulldog spirit in that sense. It took half the season to get used to it, and when the crowds come back next year, we’ll probably be shocked at how hectic and noisy it is!

But the viewing figures on ITV4 must have been good?

AG: Well, for the first couple of meetings, we took a hammering, because they clashed with the two Silverstone Formula 1 races. That was unavoidable, but after that the figures were very good. But even that was a surprise to me because there was a lot of sport happening each weekend, as everyone had shifted their events to the end of the year too.

Ash Sutton did such a great job in the Laser Tools Infiniti Q50 to win the championship. Were you surprised?

TH: No! None of us underestimated Ash’s talent, so the fact that he was up there didn’t come as a surprise. The hasty amalgamation of the BMR and Laser Tools teams over the winter and the fact that it was a newly built car – yes, perhaps that was a surprise, how they came out of the blocks so fast. The measure of them was the other rear-wheel-drive contender, the BMW [3 Series], and they were a match for it straight away. But Ash personally? Not a surprise at all. He would be in our top three BTCC drivers anyway.

DA: The surprise for me was the team side of it: that first of all they produced such a good car and that they didn’t have niggling problems. It’s good that an independent team could take on a works team and beat it, as Speedworks should have done a few years ago with the Toyota Avensis. The car was properly run, well engineered and reliable. We knew Ash was good, but if there was going to be any weakness, it would be if the team could match him. Actually, it all fitted together very well.

Is it vindication for the BTCC formula that a new team can come out and beat WSR’s BMWs?

AG: It’s not the first time that a team has built a new car and been quick out of the blocks. That team had the [series-standard] TOCA engine, so it was proven and didn’t need developing. The gearbox and suspension, everything was proven and they had rear-wheel-drive set-ups from the BMR Subaru [Levorg]. It underlined the strength of the NGTC regulations.

TH: And it’s the first time the TOCA engine has won a title.

AG: It just goes to show that engine is equal to any other out there if it’s in the right car and driven by the right driver.

Colin Turkington remains the benchmark, as does his BMW team. He was so consistent, but he lost it at the final round, didn’t he?

AG: [WSR BMW boss] Dick Bennetts would be the first to tell you their wet set-up is appalling. It certainly was at Brands Hatch. Right from practice on Saturday, the car was all at sea in the wet. That was their downfall. Would Ash have won the championship if it was dry? Who knows? But Colin is fantastic, incredibly consistent and reliable – apart from Croft, where he made a mistake, although that was quickly cancelled out by Ash making a mistake too. Colin is the consummate professional. You can see in the car that he does get himself into knots a bit, and at Brands he was driving on his mirrors a lot, because he knew he didn’t have the car he wanted underneath him. But he’s one of the BTCC’s all-time greats.

TH: Colin’s pedigree is a given. In terms of speed, he was on average the top qualifier of the year, and that was with success ballast most of the time. On Alan’s point, it’s not just the wet set-up, it’s also how the BMW uses its tyres. When they’re hot, the car is great. Had Brands been wet in the summer, the car would have been quick; the 3 Series just doesn’t work its tyres hard enough when it’s cold – wet or dry. Dick will be poring over the set-ups to work out how the Infiniti managed to generate better temperatures in its tyres.

DA: I’d argue that if you want to single out one event where it possibly went wrong for Colin, it was Thruxton. In the first race, he had mechanical problems, then he finished 13th and eighth. It wasn’t all about being in the gravel at Croft.

Behind the top two, there were a number of potential BTCC champions of the future. Let’s start with Team Dynamics Honda’s Dan Cammish.

DA: He’s the real deal. He has adapted very well from Porsche 911 Cup cars to front-wheel-drive touring cars and doesn’t make many mistakes. For me, the weakness in his make-up is that he’s not that jolly a character out of the car. I’m not suggesting that everyone has to be an entertainer, but sometimes he comes across as being arrogant, shy or grumpy – or a combination of all of them.

TH: As a driver, Dan is genuinely exceptional. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of Britain’s best through the BRDC Superstars scheme, and I saw very few exceptional drivers. Dan was one of them. He’s blisteringly fast, and he’s a highly accomplished BTCC driver now. I quite like that he’s not the same as everyone else out of the car. Being a brusque northerner, he has a chip on both shoulders! He’s a serious, applied character at the race track.

Expectations were high for the four. Speedworks Toyota Gazoo Corolla of Tom Ingram in the car’s second season. Was he enough of a contender?

DA: I was disappointed with the package, and it depends who you to talk to as to where the weakness was. Collectively, they didn’t come out all guns blazing, as I thought they might after a good debut season with the Corolla. I thought he would be more of a contender at the start, and perhaps it was another season that got away from them. There shouldn’t be little errors like the ride height problem they had at Croft [Ingram topped qualifying only to start race one from the back after his car failed a ride height check].

TH: Tom has all the speed and nous of any touring car driver. I really hate to pour fuel on David’s fire, but it’s the team that’s letting him down, with the procedural errors like that ride-height problem. His season didn’t really get going until Thruxton, when he had that double win, but that was too late. He had given away half the year by that stage.

Rory Butcher consolidated his progress from 2019, didn’t he?

TH: Absolutely. The point for me is that Motorbase went after him specifically last winter, because they wanted him in their new [Ford] Ford Focus. That says a lot, because [team boss] David Bartram will go after the driver he thinks will deliver him the best position in the championship, regardless of money. Rory’s season was slightly derailed by his big accident at Silverstone, but he’s a class driver. I don’t think we give him enough credit.

DA: I’d go along with that. He was let down by the team at the first Brands Hatch meeting with the tyre-pressure punctures, but he doesn’t make many errors. He had a pretty good, consistent season in another brand-new car. All of these young drivers we’re talking about are going to get better; they haven’t peaked yet.

Who else stood out this year, for reasons good and bad?

AG: Ollie Jackson was a delightful surprise. I like him as a person and he has put a lot of BTCC miles under his belt. He finally got the chance to win a reverse-grid race at Silverstone and did so under a lot of pressure, then he backed it up at Snetterton. He deserved his success.

DA: I’d go along with that. He was the most improved driver and the surprise of the season. My other big surprise was how the front-wheel-drive teams collectively were all so inconsistent at the start of the season, whereas Laser Tools and the BMWs were banging in good points right away; kerching, kerching, kerching! TH I also have Ollie down as my most improved driver. Nobody likes to be singled out for disappointments, but I’d say Tom Chilton and Jake Hill, because they were both in race-winning cars yet neither scored a win. Chilton should have been a team leader at BTC Racing but wasn’t. Jake had a lot of mechanical issues at the start of the year, which was a surprise, and I think an element of desperation crept into his driving, because he wasn’t getting the results he was due.