British Touring Car Championship promoter TOCA has revealed the allocation of 24 TBL entrants’ licences for the 2025 season.
While the total is down on the 27 distributed for this year, only 21 of those were used during the 2024 campaign, and BTCC insiders are confident of bigger grids next term.
The most notable among the list is One Motorsport, which took what team principal Steve Dudman described as “a planned pause” from the BTCC for 2024 after being allocated three TBLs.
The Brackley team is on the list with two TBLs, tying in with recent speculation that it would be bringing the Honda Civic Type R back to the grid after an absence of one season.
Vauxhall Astra team Power Maxed Racing has slimmed down from three TBLs to the two it used during the 2024 championship, while Aiden Moffat Racing and Carl Boardley Motorsport – which 12 months ago respectively had two TBLs and one respectively – are no longer on the list.
Moffat is known to be strongly in the mix to switch to the West Surrey Racing BMW team.
Un-Limited Motorsport, which made a late entry to the BTCC for 2024 by mopping up one of the unused TBLs, is now up to two for its expanded squad of Cupra Leons.
WSR’s retention of four TBLs comes shortly after team boss Dick Bennetts hinted to Autosport that the team was open to expanding to five cars for the 2025 season.
While TOCA has locked in the TBLs at 24, and that appears to send any chance of a fifth BMW into the buffers, there would be nothing to stop WSR trading for one of the 24 currently in use should any of the other teams not fulfil their allocation.
TOCA chief Alan Gow is confident that the grid will be bigger than it was this season, when it spiked at 21 for the third round at Snetterton but flatlined at 20 for the remainder of the events.
“Twenty-four cars is the exact kind of figure I always said the BTCC should ideally be about,” Gow told Autosport.
“The 2024 season was the outlier because of the two teams – Team Hard [which used a variety of TBLs from different sources] and One Motorsport – which made late withdrawals.
“This year we had to put up with what we had, and that gave us the opportunity for some extra cars to come in for next year. It’s a good, competitive grid.”
The final entry list will not be confirmed until the season launch at Donington Park on 15 April.
TBL holders for 2025
Alliance Racing 4
Excelr8 Motorsport 4
Speedworks Motorsport 4
West Surrey Racing 4
Power Maxed Racing 2
Restart Racing 2
One Motorsport 2
Un-Limited Motorsport 2
