What’s the biggest challenge facing a racing driver competing in two major championships? Staying focused on each? Balancing the pressure? Or perhaps getting to grips with different cars? Nope. The answer is much simpler.
“Jet lag,” says Tom Chilton, world touring car driver for Sébastien Loeb Racing and recently confirmed British Touring Car Championship returnee with Power Maxed Racing. Chilton, who is back in the BTCC after a five-year hiatus, will rack up the air miles this season. He’ll contest a total of 50 races: 30 in the BTCC spread across 10 weekends and 20 in the WTCC at a further 10 events.
“It’s the first time this has ever been done in these two series, so I’m a bit of a guinea pig,” says the 31-year-old from Reigate in Surrey.
Chilton, who is the older brother of former F1 driver Max, burst into the BTCC in 2002 at the age of 17 and finished third in his first race. Over the next decade he raced in the BTCC for Honda, Vauxhall, Team Dynamics and Team Aon/Ford, amassing 12 race victories and a best finish of fifth in the championship.
In 2012 he graduated to the WTCC with Team Aon and the global series has been his focus ever since, but he says he has unfinished business in the domestic championship. “My last BTCC race was at Silverstone in 2011 and I won by keeping Jason Plato behind me,” he says. “I want to come back as I finished: by winning.”
He acknowledges that might be a tall order. Chilton will be driving a brand new Vauxhall Astra – “We’ve only got two test days, so we’ll be on the back foot” – for a team that is embarking on its most ambitious BTCC campaign to date.
Nonetheless, Chilton reckons he can capitalise on the series’ unpredictable racing. “The current BTCC regulations have led to more overtaking and closer action,” he says. “If one car is carrying 75kg of success ballast while running a hard tyre and another car is on the soft tyre option with no extra weight, there will be a difference in lap times of about two seconds.”
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