Of course the British Touring Car Championship has weathered storms over its existence. That’s inevitable, given it’s been going for 66 years.
Think about some of the dire fields of the mid-1980s in Group A days; or the early 2000s when Octagon Motorsport took over the running of the series after buying out organising body TOCA, and the new BTC Touring era kicked off with eight cars on the grid at the 2001 opener. By comparison with that, what’s happened during the 2023-24 off-season has been more a passing shower than full-on thunder and lightning.
From the 27 cars that fought out the BTCC in 2023, nine were lost for 2024 in the forms of Team Hard (six) and One Motorsport (three). But, thanks to the emergence of new team Restart Racing, an extra entry at Speedworks Motorsport, plus the phoenix-like rising from the ashes of Hard after all with a recently announced duo, the field stands at 23 – with the possibility of one more. Whichever way you look at it, that’s hardly a crisis.
“For the last six years or so, I’ve said plenty of times on the record to people that ideally we should reduce it to around 24 cars for a number of very good reasons, although obviously I would have preferred it to be more gradual rather than to happen over one off-season,” reflects TOCA chief Alan Gow, who returned to the BTCC helm in 2003 after the ill-fated Octagon era.
“But be that as it may, we’re going to be around about that number, and that’s the right number as far as I’m concerned. That goes for a lot of things – practicality reasons, all fitting in garages when you go to somewhere like Oulton Park and all that, but also it’s quality over quantity. That’s why Formula 1 don’t increase their grid to 30 cars. Even V8 Supercars – what do they have, 24 cars [he’s bang on]?”
Bumper grids are a double-edged sword. It may not have been touring cars, but the old Formula 3 European Championship is a good illustration. Back in 2015, the Max Verstappen effect exploded entries to around 35 cars, before it shrunk to 20-odd in 2016 and got killed off by the FIA at the end of 2018, by which time the regular grid was 23 or 24.
But the 2015 season was the worst in the series’ history, because driving standards were so poor on the crowded tracks, and safety cars and red flags abounded. The 2017-18 seasons, with fields in the low-twenties, were superb. Gow isn’t really a single-seater man, but can relate it to tin-tops.
“When you go to Knockhill or Brands Indy, can you imagine 32 cars in qualifying around there?” he asks. “It’s a nightmare and there are more things to go wrong, ie cars in gravel traps and everything else. Now if we end up with a greater ratio of quality over quantity, then that’s absolutely achieved our aims. Job done.
“Also, if we’re at 23 – I don’t know what the number will be [for 2024] – there’s latitude for another team to come in next year, because when all the TBLs were full up no one could come in unless they bought a team and bought cars.”
"I’m not wedded to anything for 2027, whether we decide hybrid is a good thing to have and it might come down in price or whatever. Certainly the only thing I can tell you is we won’t be going EV"
Alan Gow
The TBLs, effectively a licence issued by TOCA to run a car in the BTCC, were introduced in 2014, initially with 30 of them. Later that decade, Gow allowed a swelling to 32, but has since been back-pedalling, hoping for natural ‘wastage’ (such as we’ve seen this winter) to cull a few from the grid for the reasons he’s outlined. With that in mind, will he have a maximum TBL figure for the future?
“I will,” he agrees, “and all the team owners always wanted the number to be lower, but it’s the old story: ‘please lower the grid numbers but don’t lower mine’. It’s a decision we can take for next year onwards as to what we’ll set the maximum grid number at, and I think it’ll be 24-ish.
“Even commercially, it’s better for all the teams. It just works for everyone. The big loser out of it, when you consider how much we’re missing as far as revenue goes on registration fees, is for me to want to reduce it to 24 sounds like I’m self-harming, because I’m purposely bringing down our revenue, but you do it for the best interests of the championship, not for my revenue, otherwise I’d keep it at 32.”
How much is the registration fee then? “About £30,000 per car,” Gow replies. “The registration fee has never been an issue, because it’s actually really good value for money when you consider.”
The big beast when you talk to many in the BTCC paddock is the cost of the hybrid system, introduced for 2022. It’s been partially responsible for budgets being raised, making it harder for some deserving drivers to secure a seat. The NGTC ruleset under which the BTCC runs stipulates five-year contracts for all control-parts supplies so, like it or not, the Cosworth-supplied hybrid is with us until the end of 2026. For 2027, there’ll be a new ruleset.
Bearing in mind the World Rally Championship recently ditched hybrid from its premier Rally1 class for 2025, what’s the thinking in BTCC-land?
“That’s a decision we’ll make,” says Gow. “We’re in discussions now with the teams on the new regulations, planning on what it looks like. I’m not wedded to anything for 2027, whether we decide hybrid is a good thing to have and it might come down in price or whatever. Certainly the only thing I can tell you is we won’t be going EV. Whether we have hybrid or non-hybrid, or greater hybrid or lesser hybrid, that’s all to play for. A lot of it will also depend on what else we do with synthetic fuels and everything else.”
Regardless of the cost of hybrid, one of its biggest effects has been to reintroduce a purity to competition that the BTCC had been lacking during the era when ballast was used to penalise successful drivers.
The 2018 season featured a record 17 different winners, from which you could only deduce that there was little kudos from taking a BTCC race victory. Up to and including 2021, if you turned up at your local track and were a fan of a particular title contender, and he was driving a lazy, heavy old tank around in 19th place because he had 75kg of ballast, then that wasn’t really a good look.
Over 2022-23, however, there have been complaints that the restrictions on hybrid use that replaced success ballast have not gone far enough, leading to processional racing at the front. That’s why new sporting regulations for 2024 effectively double the power boost from hybrid and turbo when deployed.
“What I would say to you is wait until you see what happens this year,” enthuses Gow. “You’re now looking at the thick end of 60 horsepower at the push of a button. Things are going to be very different.
“If you speak to those drivers that tested it in September at Snetterton – we took three top drivers and teams [Ash Sutton/Motorbase Ford, Tom Ingram/Excelr8 Hyundai and Colin Turkington/WSR BMW) out there and they tested it and came back saying, ‘Woah, this is going to make a difference’. I think you need to look at how it works out this year, and then come back to me and say you don’t like it.
“Ballast was just a blunt instrument – it really was. Our problem with the hybrid is that the first year we obviously had some reliability issues, and it was a year of learning, and we didn’t get everything right. The second year, last year, we hardly had any reliability issues. So now we could understand what we’d increase and how we’d do it. This is the year when it will actually show its true worth.”
Hybrid, then, is on the table for 2027 onwards. But what will the next generation of BTCC car look like? Probably not much different to the existing NGTC machinery. And there could even be a carryover of pre-2027 cars into the new era.
"You can make a BTCC car out of SUVs and crossovers. If a team or a manufacturer wants to introduce that, bring it on"
Alan Gow
“That’s certainly the aim, to make as many of the current cars as possible viable for an update,” asserts Gow. “I don’t even know why we still call it NGTC – that was only a working title for a new set of regulations. We have a working group with all the teams, and it’s called a New Regulation Working Group – very snappy bloody title! – and that’s what we’re going through now, working out what the new regulations look like and what’ll they consist of. Everything’s up in the air.
“There’s nothing wrong with the current regulations. You’d look at what you can do to make them better, more cost-effective, all this sort of stuff. Every team owner is involved in the NRWG, and it’s exactly the same process that we went through when we came up with NGTC.
“We’d get to a stage where we work out the framework of what the technical regulations will look like, and then you have some more focused technical groups [that’ll be the, erm, Technical Working Group then] to get down to the nitty gritty on those sort of details. But at the moment we’re just doing the framework of what the cars will consist of.”
Gow gets animated when asked whether the net might be broadened from what currently pass as touring cars – ie your saloon and hatchback staple diet. After all, aesthetically unpleasing as they tend to be, SUVs scoff up a large percentage of the new-car market.
“You can do that now – this is the part I don’t bloody get,” he says. “If you want to go and run a Range Rover Evoque, you can. We don’t say in our regulations it has to be a saloon car. We have the minimum dimensions of the car, and we have the subframes you can bolt on – you can make a BTCC car out of SUVs and crossovers. If a team or a manufacturer wants to introduce that, bring it on. That’s exactly why these regulations were designed the way they were.”
The teams, asserts Gow, are “all 100% behind” continuing with the current philosophy of spec front and rear subframes, currently supplied by RML, onto which the race car can be bolted.
“The basic architecture they’re very happy to continue on with,” he states. “And why would we change it, because it allows you to do so many things? That’s why we’ve had such a big variety of cars racing under it. Besides, they’ve all invested their money into that. And then you would start to look at how you can make it a little bit more cost-effective, a little bit easier to work on in some areas, just all the lessons you’ve had from the last 10 years [of NGTC] to make them better.”
Both front and rear-wheel-drive machinery will remain eligible, adds Gow.
“That’s still in the workings,” he says. “It’s quite funny. Remember how the teams used to moan a couple of years ago saying the rear-wheel drive’s so much better? It was just people sounding off when Dick [Bennetts, WSR BMW chief] was having his purple patch, and now people don’t say anything about the rear-wheel-drive advantage [after the Motorbase/Alliance Ford Focus steamroller of 2023]. Funny, that.”
So, TOCA is working with the teams on the new regulations, but the crucial thing here is TOCA itself remaining in situ to run the BTCC from 2027, and that’s in the power of governing body Motorsport UK.
“All of our contracts come up at the same time – ITV as well,” points out Gow. “And that’s three years away, the end of 2026. We’re still a long way away from those contracts ending, so I think it’s a bit early to be talking about those.”
Yes, but the announcement of TOCA staying on for 2022-26 came in July 2019. Keeping to the same lead time as then gives you… four months: “Then I’d better get a wiggle on! Honestly it’s not something I’m concentrating on now.”
There’ll be plenty of people saying there’s no reason to change… Gow reasons: “That would be my attitude as well. I can’t imagine why anyone would not want to continue to have us run the BTCC. We’ve got the runs on the board.”
Ah, the cricketing analogy betrays the Australian. But we’re Brits, we like talking about the climate. Not everyone agrees with Gow – “Do you think I should retire?” the 68-year-old asks, tongue in cheek – but, with him at the helm, those BTCC storms have tended to be averted before they’ve struck land. The series has stayed strong, but it does need weatherproofing for the future.
