The new kit will be adopted as standard by all teams, who have busied themselves with understanding the new system during testing.
However that's not the only significant change over the off-season, which has seen plenty of intriguing team and driver moves.
Reigning champion Ash Sutton's move from Laser Tools Racing to Motorbase Performance under the NAPA Racing banner, where he'll be joined by series returnee Dan Cammish, was the subject of Autosport magazine's season preview issue (21 April).
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But with tin-top rising star Jake Hill joining Colin Turkington at West Surrey Racing, Tom Chilton returning to his front-wheel drive roots at Excler8 Motorsport and Jason Plato joining BTC Racing for his swansong year, there are set to be plenty of storylines to follow throughout the season.
Autosport picks out the five major plot points to watch out for.
1. Dawn of hybrid means sunset for success ballast
The new Cosworth hybrid kit, including battery, has raised the base weight for cars by 70kg, but it does mean that each driver can benefit from a 10% increase in power – once a car has reached 120km/h (75mph) – for 15 seconds per lap.
It also means that the largely unpopular old success-ballast system has been done away with. Now, instead of adding weight to leading competitors, series organiser TOCA will cut the hybrid deployment available.
For each qualifying session from round two at Brands Hatch onwards, the championship leader will not be allowed any hybrid use, and this increases in 1.5-second increments for second to 10th in the standings up to the full 15s for 11th downwards.
In races below 17 laps, the championship leader prior to race one each weekend will have their hybrid use cut by 10 laps, decreasing in one-lap increments for the rest of the top 10. In races over 17 laps, the scale is 15-13-11-9-7-5-4-3-2-1. As with the old ballast system, this is reapplied to the top 10 in races one and two for races two and three respectively. Therefore, the first time we see this new format will be race two at Donington, which, scheduled for 16 laps, will use the 10-9-8-etc system.
The qualifying hybrid rules penalise a series leader far more on short tracks than longer circuits, and TOCA boss Alan Gow admits: “On a short circuit we might need to alter those numbers. For Brands Indy and Knockhill, they’re the circuits where you think, ‘OK, the disparity might be a bit different there’. If it’s manifestly wrong, then you’d tweak it.”
The same goes for the figures overall, which will be amended if they are regarded as penalising successful drivers too much or too little.
How can you tell when hybrid is being used? Well, it won’t be used at all on opening laps from the start or safety car restarts, but after that LED lights in the rear side windows will alert spectators, although if you’re standing at the Craners at Donington you might need tele/periscopic vision to see when it’s likely deployed on the back straight.
The BTCC is the first tin-top series to mandate hybrid usage, and Gow is pretty proud of that.
“Part of that is exciting to be honest,” he says. “When you’re the first to do it, you haven’t got any lessons to go from. People will learn from us. But I’m really glad we’ve done it. We had so many headwinds over the past couple of years, Cosworth, the suppliers and ourselves – the pandemic, the supply shortages which are still ongoing and the pricing of things – that the easiest thing to do would have to been to say, ‘Let’s delay it for a year’. But do you know what? Who knows what’s going to happen next year? You could come up against another headwind. So you’ve just got to dig deep and get on and do it.”
2. Turkington in good shape as Hill joins
Four-time BTCC champion Colin Turkington believes that the adoption of the hybrid regulations can play into the hands of his West Surrey Racing squad and the BMW 330e M Sport. The Northern Irishman was quickest in the first two official tests at Donington and Croft, while new team-mate Jake Hill was second overall at Thruxton, a circuit where the rear-wheel-drive machine traditionally does not excel.
“I think the ballast certainly had its moment in the BTCC, it was very effective and created good racing, and generally the 3 Series coped with the ballast quite well,” says Turkington. “We’re used to running heavy, so I think that will stand us in good stead in 2022 [due to the extra hybrid weight]. Running 1370kg is nothing new for us. So we know where we need to be with the car, weight distribution, etc, and that’s probably why we’ve come out of the box quite quick, because we’ve got a good understanding of the base package.”
And what about those test times?
“You can’t read too much into testing pace, but certainly the car seems fast out of the box, comfortable,” adds Turkington. “The hybrid aside, Dick [Bennetts, WSR boss] has invested a lot into the package, into the chassis, the aero. We’ve looked at everything to try and get back on top.”
While Turkington has a new BMW shell for 2022, Stephen Jelley retains his 2021 car and Hill takes the wheel of the ex-Tom Oliphant weapon. It’s a massive break for the Kentishman, who has spent most of his career as an underdog.
“I don’t feel pressure, I just feel that I need to perform and match Colin or if not try and beat him,” states Hill. “I’ve got no place to hide now. Everyone’s been saying I’m quite good at it, and now I’m in the best car with the best team-mates I’ve got nowhere to hide. It’s just a case of getting on top of it now and doing the best job that I can.”
3. From South Korea to a team in Suffolk via a specialist in Wiltshire
Some might say it’s a masterstroke. While those using the brand-new M-Sport-built TOCA customer engine have lagged a bit in testing, Excelr8 Motorsport commissioned bespoke Hyundai powerplants from former TOCA supplier Swindon Powertrain for its squadron of i30 N machines, and lead driver Tom Ingram has been up there in testing.
We can be sure that TOCA will, if it feels necessary, allow the customer-engine users some extra boost in time for Donington. But for Ingram, who has used the Swindon/TOCA engine throughout his BTCC career to date, it was a case of getting to grips with what he already knows, despite the Hyundai block being completely new to NGTC competition.
“It feels good,” asserts Ingram. “There’s nothing crazy going on. I haven’t jumped in it and gone, ‘Oh my God, this feels insane, there’s so much power’, but equally I haven’t jumped in it and gone, ‘It feels a bit shit’. It feels exactly as it should do. Driveable, good top speed, good bottom end. If you’d said we had the same engine as we had last year, I’d say, ‘Yeah, OK, it feels strong’.
“From a driveability point of view, from a comfort point of view, knowing how it works, I’m really happy. I’d like to think we can be close to the pace with it, but we’ve also got to remember it’s a completely new engine philosophy for us with a new block. It’s going to be a bit of a season of fettling and learning and understanding it.”
So could it be another nearly-man season for Ingram? One such was 2021, where he was often lumbered with 66kg of success ballast as second in the championship and, on a front-wheel-drive car, that hurt. Ingram describes the outgoing system as “a bit archaic”, and that the i30 N was “a good car with ballast”.
“We were the heaviest of the front-wheel-drive cars coming in every weekend, so we should be outqualified – that was the very concept of it. The car feels actually better than we had last year. There’s a slightly different weight distribution in terms of where the battery is going and where the success ballast was, but I actually think we’ve got quite a good base to work from primarily because we’ve got the knowledge of what we had last year.”
4. Plato in quick Civic for farewell tour
Up to a few weeks ago, if someone had told you that a multiple BTCC champion in his mid-fifties would be competing this year in a Honda Civic Type R, you’d have assumed it would be Matt Neal returning with his Team Dynamics squad. Instead, a late deal ensures that Neal’s old nemesis Jason Plato lines up with BTC Racing in a Dynamics-built machine for what he pledges will be his final season in the series.
It gives the two-time title winner a great chance to sign off on a high and prove that he’s still got it, especially since he partners BTC regular Josh Cook, third in the points in 2021 and one of the big BTCC talents.
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“I’m really excited about it because first impressions so far of the car are good,” enthuses Plato, who jumps across from a Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall. “I’ve been against the Honda for many years, been the enemy, and I sat behind and in front of Josh a couple of times last year, and Dan Rowbottom, and Gordon Shedden.
“The Honda is particularly good in certain key areas, and certainly the last couple of years there were certain areas where the car I was in wasn’t very good, and it’s in those areas. So even after a few laps at Donington when I first jumped in the car it was, ‘Oh Christ, this is really good here’.
“It’s got really good, stretchy, elastic rear grip, and that means you can really lean on the rear, and you can set the rear up to move without it biting you, which then is good for the front end. But I’ve got to learn the car because it requires a different style. I’m a little bit at the moment too aggressive with my inputs on corner entry, because I don’t need to hustle it in – it will go in. And I’m slowly working on that.
“Am I going to be as quick over one lap as Josh who’s half my age? Biology would say probably not. But if I can get the car doing what I want it to do, then there’s no reason why I can’t challenge for the championship.”
And what of the Dynamics Honda challenge?
“We had a shocking year and still finished sixth,” points out Shedden of his comeback season in 2021. “We finished the year in a much better position once everything aligned a bit more, and that’s the form we need to start with this year.”
5. The Collard odyssey continues
It crept under the radar a bit with the Plato fanfare, but Ricky Collard’s recruitment by Speedworks Motorsport to partner established leading light Rory Butcher in its Toyota Corolla line-up could be significant long term, because the Hampshireman wants his future to be in the BTCC.
Collard, remember, was a rival of the likes of Lando Norris, Colton Herta and Dan Ticktum in his single-seater days, and as a member of the BMW Junior Team was a winner of international GT3 races. But the BTCC is where the heart is for the son of Rob Collard, a 15-time race winner in the series.
Collard Jr did contest four rounds in 2018 with a WSR BMW standing in for his dad, and took a podium finish, but has faced a steep learning curve with the front-wheel-drive Toyota, especially as he was forced to miss the Croft test due to a bout of salmonella.
“Ever since the age of three, I’ve been stood on the other side of the fence, supporting my dad and going all around the country watching him, and also just being a fan of the touring cars,” he smiles. “Now 20 years later I’ve got my first opportunity of a full season, I’m super-excited for it.
“Rory’s pace is really quick. We saw that towards the end of last year. It is quite a difficult car to drive, the Corolla GR Sport, but I’m learning, he’s learning, the team are learning every day, and I’m hoping Rory can use his experience to develop the car, and I can just learn exactly where I’ve got to be.”
