THE FUTURE OF TOURING CARS

The crowds may still be there, but with the focus on the drivers, and little to differentiate the cars on track, the sport has lost much of its allure. Can a return to the Super Touring glory days ever be realised? Let the discussion begin…

It’s currently enjoying a resurgence, but we ask what’s next for saloon car racing

FOR DECADES TOURING CAR racing has provided some of the closest and most exciting competition you’ll find in the world of motorsport. The formula is simple – cars based upon, or inspired by, road-going models and a blind eye turned to the occasional panel-rubbing pass – and it’s one that works whether you’re pitching the latest silhouette racers against one another or dropping professional drivers into Minis, MKII Jags and Mustangs in front of a crowd of jauntily dressed Goodwood-goers. Unlike some of the other motorsports we’ve covered recently in this series, the appeal of touring cars seems to be enduring, and discussing the topic with evo’s Stuart Gallagher, Richard Meaden, John Barker, Adam Towler, James Disdale and Will Beaumont resulted in perhaps the most positive of our chats so far – though David Vivian chipped in only to dismiss the entire genre with a yawn…

You can’t mention touring cars without referencing the British Touring Car Championship, one of the few modern series that arguably matches its historical predecessors for excitement, in pure racing terms at least. Trackside attendance backs this up: in its Super Touring heyday, trackside crowds regularly reached the 40,000 range; remarkably, similar numbers still turn up today. It’s affordable to attend and easy to watch on TV thanks to comprehensive coverage with ITV, while at the circuit, open pitlane sessions let fans get close to their heroes.

BTCC drivers have also missed the memo that modern racing drivers should be dull. Barker cites the championship’s personalities as a big part of its appeal. Even at its lowest points, BTCC has been essential watching simply for some of the driver battles – Muller and Plato, Giovanardi and Plato, Neal… and Plato. Some individual teams (notably Vauxhall and Honda) may have dominated recent decades, but the battles have been fierce and names like Cleland, Biela and Menu have gone down in BTCC folklore.

Meaden thinks the focus on personalities and rivalries may be at the expense of the cars themselves, though – an area that several of us agree needs some work. ‘BTCC cars share so many common components they are no longer the stars,’ explains Dickie. ‘It’s now more about the drivers, which is a shame.’

Barker suggests that ‘ identifiable cars’ should be a touring car strength, while Gallagher references the old ‘ win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ adage, rueing the lack of similarity between the cars you see on track and those in the car park: ‘Even during the Super Touring

era the Alfa 155s, Ford Mondeos and BMW 318s still resembled the punters’ road cars, even if the engines and aero stretched the link a bit too far.’

While BTCC still has large grids and varied cars (11 different shapes in 2017), very few feature any official works backing; compare this to the Super Touring days when distinctive silhouettes carried official factory colours and teams were typically run by the official importer or a dealer group. With one or two exceptions, indistinct liveries make it difficult to pick out your particular five- door, two-box hatchback in the modern-day pack. Beaumont is another who thinks it’s a shame that so much of the grid shares similar componentry, from subframes to whole engines, and suggests that touring car racing ‘ is at its best when there’s a real desire for manufacturers to be involved’.

‘I hate to say it,’ adds Towler, ‘ but I’ve had very little interest in the BTCC since the demise of the Super Touring formula – as the cars have become more uniform under the skin, so my enthusiasm for it has fallen.’ Disdale comes to the same conclusion: ‘ The modern era of the British series delivers plenty of different manufacturers, but under the skin I know they’re all using the same components, which makes it essentially a silhouette formula.’

Meaden and Gallagher both think the solution is homologation. ‘ Group A touring cars were great to watch and a true reflection of the road products,’ notes Dickie. ‘ To be competitive, manufacturers had to make the effort and build special cars. Just look at the more modern end of historic racing – Group A Cossies, M3s, Rovers and so on are hugely popular.’

That road relevance diminished throughout the Super Touring years as the cars became more technologically advanced, but actually improved slightly with the otherwise unloved early BTC regulations from 2001 – BTCC car parks were full of Astra Coupes, MG ZSS and Honda Civics not dissimilar to those that were trading paintwork on track.

Still, the BTCC is healthier than the DTM or WTCC. ‘Current DTM is like a one-make, single-seater championship,’ says Beaumont, ‘except the cars have slightly different-shaped lids to make them look a bit like touring cars.’ DTM has always been impressive for its engineering, but the race cars are now so distant from their road-going counterparts that it’s difficult

‘Even during the Super Touring era the 155s, Mondeos and 318s resembled the punters’ cars’

to become enthused. ‘It’s so aero- dependent that the races are as processional as those of F1,’ notes Disdale. That series stalwart Mercedes-benz will pull the plug at the end of 2018 – in favour of Formula E – is a grim indicator of DTM’S long-term health.

WTCC has a different problem – it’s simply not that good to watch. Like the BTCC, works teams are few, but the independent entries aren’t diverse enough to make up for it. There are only five different shapes on the grid, and most of those are difficult to get excited by – unless a booted Chinese-market Citroën C3 or Chevrolet Cruze gets your juices going. Big names like Huff, Tarquini and Muller should bring some excitement, but the racing and the circuits are a shadow of their former selves. The recent introduction of rallycross-style joker laps is appropriately farcical.

If there’s a saving grace, it’s that from 2018 the WTCC will adopt TCR regulations, effectively taking it back to a proper production car series not unlike the old Group A days. TCR is still in its infancy but a huge number of models are already homologated and eligible. The majority of those are hatchbacks, which doesn’t solve touring cars’ aesthetic issues (see also: WRC and WRX), but it does mean you can go to your local dealership and buy a Golf GTI or Hyundai i30 N not a million miles removed from the racing version.

Beaumont is cautiously optimistic about the new rules: ‘ TCR has shown that there’s still an appetite for manufacturers to be involved in touring car racing, even if it’s to sell race cars rather than to promote road cars.’ Towler agrees, and adds that the productionbased formula and Gt3-style balance- of-performance regulations should put a cap on costs. But is the emotional appeal of Group A or Super Touring there? ‘Unfortunately, it’ll probably never connect with me like bespoke racing machines being pushed to the limit by the best teams and drivers in the world,’ says Adam.

TCR does bring production relevance back to touring car racing, but in terms of pure excitement it’s yet to prove itself as the ultimate solution. Starting with more exciting cars might help, suggests Gallagher – Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglios, AMG C63s and BMW M3s would immediately bump up the desirability factor.

Group A, Super Touring and Itc-era DTM might have outgrown their original ambitions, but they burned very brightly while they lasted – and it’ll take something very special to bring back that golden- era combination of great action, vibrant personalities and amazing racing cars.

Failing all that, there’s always V8 Supercars – something everyone aside from Disdale managed to forget: ‘ Yes, there are only three manufacturers and the regulations enforce quite a lot of parts sharing, but you can forgive all that for the V8- engined, rear- drive brilliance of it all. And they race around Bathurst’s roller- coaster Mount Panorama circuit…’