HOW THE BTCC HIT THE HEIGHTS
How saloon car racing stole the lime light in theuk.
Production Saloon racing in the United Kingdom was nothing new, even when the British Saloon Car Championship was created in 1958.
The very first saloon-only race was in early 1950s, but the cars were regularly seen as a lower class in sports and GT races. The machines proved popular with the public, but it wasn’t until the British Racing and Sports Car Club got involved that an official championship was first formed.
The organising club’s secretary Ken Gregory was the driving force behind the concept. A trial event was held at the end of 1957, on Boxing Day at Brands Hatch. It was won by Tommy Sopwith driving an Equipe Endeavour 3.4-litre Jaguar. The championship regulations were announced in the second week of January 1958 and the first points-paying race took place at Brands Hatch in May. The category was split into two races with Sopwith (Jaguar) claiming the top class and Jack Sears (Austin A105) winning the smaller capacity class.
The BRSCC created the rules and, to suit the manufacturers’ product ranges, four individual classes were structured for cars with engine capacities of up to 1200cc, 1201-1600cc, 1601-2700cc and 2701cc and above. The initial championship ran for the Bonneville Trophy, which was put up by the British Motor Corporation for the driver with the most points.
At the end of the campaign, Sears and Sopwith were level on points and a tie-breaker was needed to sort out the champion. Both rejected the idea that the title should be settled on the toss of a coin.
Instead, they took to the track in 1.5-litre Rileys and did a five-lap shoot out and then swapped cars and did it again. Sears won on the sodden track on aggregate by 1.6 seconds. Later, Sopwith regretted the decision. “I think I must have been a halfwit to agree to drive BMC cars against the lead BMC driver. Obviously if I had the choice and with the advantage of hindsight, I would think up a different solution. But I got beaten and that was that.”
The formative years proved popular with even soon-to-become F1 champion Mike Hawthorn racing a Jaguar in that maiden campaign. A rule tweak in 1960 stipulated that the champion would be crowned from the under1000cc runners, and several of the bigger machines that had dominated the series up to that point were knocked out. Doc Shepherd took the crown in an Austin A40 but there was a major change on the horizon: FIA Group 2 rules were adopted in the UK for 1961.
The series was aligned to whatever the prevailing regulations were in Europe. In 1961, it went back to the traditional four classes, and it remained that way through until 1989.
Jim Clark was the championship’s highest profile title winner when he contested the full season in 1964 in a factory-run Ford Lotus Cortina – and he had taken part in the year as reigning F1 champion, but his title came amid the American muscle cars, which dominated the top classes for much of the 1960s. The rules were changed to improve competition and to also make sure that the cars didn’t become prohibitively expensive. Group 1B and Group A were the bedrocks of the championship from 1974 through to 1990.
The category changed its name from the British Saloon Car Championship to the British Touring Car Championship for the 1987 season, and that was a period when the series was about to hit a massive upward trajectory. One of the primary factors was the influence of Barrie Hinchliffe Productions, which provided edited highlights to BBC Grandstand after each round. To begin with, it was 15-minute clips rounding up the main action from the events, which helped present the BTCC in its best light.
The all-action series was an immediate hit, and the influence of presenter and BHP partner Steve Rider helped push the championship under the noses of millions of viewers.
“Up until that point, Grandstand would just go and cover a race meeting, regardless of what was on the bill,” explains Rider, who has remained loyal
to the championship even to this day. “You would see, for example, round eight of the British Saloon Car Championship from Silverstone and then not see anything again until perhaps the following season. There was no narrative to it. Covering the series as a whole gave the viewer the chance to actually follow the story of the year, which made it easier to explain. And, we were able to slot a highlights package in the middle of Grandstand at prime time on a Saturday afternoon right before, for example, the Grand National. It brought the sport to a new audience.
“The teams and the drivers embraced it too. We were able to get great access and, pretty soon, the drivers were playing up to the camera as well. It quickly became TV gold.”
What wasn’t easy to explain was the complicated class structure. While Andy Rouse and the Ford Sierra Cosworths were dominating in terms of class wins, Frank Sytner and John Cleland were crowned as champions and the fans in their armchairs at home were left confused.
Significant changes over the five-year period from 1989 shook up the series and laid the foundations for the success that the BTCC has been ever since.
The initial think-tank to revolutionise tin-top racing in the UK was made up of several key players in the series, including Prodrive’s David Richards and Rouse. Firstly, the multi-class structure was phased out completely for 1991 and the following year TOCA was formed.
TOCA was headed up by Australian import Alan Gow. It secured the rights to promote the series from the governing body, the RAC MSA, and the new rules were a huge success. The final part of the revolution came in 1993, when the TOCA Package was created – and that was, in part, down to the MG Car Club’s Cockshoot Cup.
“It was at Oulton Park – the BTCC was the headline act and the support races were rather random,” remembers Gow. “I looked out on track and saw this disparate field of MGS going around. At this point, I thought we could put together something special to enhance the race day even more.”
Renault, Vauxhall and Ford committed, and the race day line-up was complete. The two-litre tin-top formula was an instant hit, and allowed manufacturers to commit to the category. The formula was also adopted by the FIA in 1993, and that is when things ramped up even further. In 1994, the BTCC featured 10 manufacturer teams.
Along with them came several star names, including the likes of ex-f1 drivers Jo Winkelhock, Gabriele Tarquini and Jan Lammers, and the championship gradually transformed itself from a category for older drivers to those who were seeking a new career option. The average age on the grid started to fall.
The television coverage made stars of the drivers. The spotlight was firmly on the series, and it quickly became the most heavily attended motorsport in the UK aside from the British Grand Prix. Images of the championship were used in national advertising campaigns and the category became a real dogfight for honours.
Super Touring allowed a large degree of flexibility, and that in turn meant that budgets rocketed. Teams were out testing virtually every week, and the money spent on development and tyres was unlimited. It was enough to turn several firms off the sport. The bubble had to burst somewhere and it did in 2000. There were three works teams – Ford, Vauxhall and Honda – and each ran three cars.
The Prodrive Ford operation – which employed Alain Menu, Rickard Rydell and Anthony Reid to drive – allegedly spent £10 million on the domestic programme.
During that season, too, Gow sold the BTCC to Octagon, which was owned by the American Interpublic Group, a sports promoter. It was a major change, and also new regulations were drawn up. Out went the super expensive Super Tourers, and in came new cut-price Btc-touring rules.
The new regulations galvanised the series to a degree but it wasn’t until Gow returned halfway through 2003 that a real shake-up took place. He drafted in Super 2000 cars alongside the Btc-touring ones. During his maiden season back at the helm, there were 19 cars on the grid. It soon yielded a capacity entry again.
As S2000 died out, a new revolution was needed again, and that came in the shape of the NGTC regulations ( see feature, page 50-53). That has been a success, with even more cut-price parts and simplified engineering.
The television coverage of the series fluctuated between channels when the BBC stopped broadcasting it, but it has found a happy home on ITV4, which carries each race meeting live and it has support from a highly active social media account. As of next season, it will be the only motor racing championship in the UK with freeto-air TV coverage, which has been a vital ingredient in keeping the sponsors interested in the category. That, in turn, keeps the crowd coming through the turnstiles.
The future has been brought into focus too, with recent news that the category’s technical bosses are looking at ways of introducing hybrid systems into the cars. This will not be done all at once: it will be introduced gradually to make sure that teams can retain value in their current machines. It is a move that the championship bosses have to make to reflect the changing landscape in the roadcar market, which has to be at the centre of the BTCC’S ethos. It needs to reinvent to keep relevant.
That is in the future. At the moment, the British Touring Car Championship is in rude health with packed out grids and thousands of trackside fans and its celebration season has been marked with a special doublepoints race at Snetterton, which was won by three-time title winner Matt Neal in his Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R.