NOW AND NEXT FOR THE SERIES
The championship has evolved to survive. by Matt james
The entire basis of the British Touring Car Championship’s meteoric success was set in stone by the single set of car specifications that came into place in the early 1990s, and they eventually became the Super Touring formula.
That exploded as the category was adopted around the world but motorsport is cyclical and by 2000, the bubble had burst.
The early decade of the 2000s was defined by a difficult balancing act. The European and World Touring Car Championship opted for Super 2000 regulations, but the BTCC had already gone down its own route of simplified Btc-touring specifications in 2001.
When Alan Gow returned to the helm of the category for his first full season in 2004, he could see that the writing was on the wall for BTC-T and opened up the entry to S2000 cars too. An equivalency system was put in place, mainly based around the weight of the cars, but it would lead to endless gripes (and that was even before you introduce things like the turbo diesel SEAT Leons in 2008 and the liquefied petroleum gas Ford Focus machines in 2010).
So the series bosses and the technical working group (TWG), which comprises leading members of the top teams, had a rethink and NGTC was born in 2010. NGTC originally stood for Next Generation Touring Car, although that is a moniker that Gow is no longer keen on (“How can they be ‘next generation’ when they are already here?” he rightly asks).
“The Super 2000 rules were dying out and it was also way too expensive,” says Gow. “There weren’t any new manufacturers coming into S2000 – and the costs of it were rocketing. It had had its day and we thought that we didn’t want to rely on international categories to shape the future of the BTCC because in the past that hadn’t worked all that well for us.”
Gow says the premise of NGTC was to make the cars as cost effective as they could and to open it up to as many different shapes and sizes as possible.
The NGTC regulations involved several spec-parts to take the cost out of development of the cars ( see main picture, p52-53) and it also gave the championship the opportunity for some diversification.
“It gave us the chance to have front- and rear-wheel-drive cars, which was important,” says Gow. “There are other championships around that stick with just one drivetrain format and they are very restricted on body styles. We sought to have the greatest diversity of cars that we could have. We have front- and rear-wheel-drive. We have three-, four-door and five-door cars. We have saloons, estates and hatchbacks. And there is nothing in the regulations to stop someone building a mini-suv-type car, and someone will do that I am sure. That was an important part of the regulations for us: we wanted to open it up to as many things as we could.”
The introduction of the forefather of what is on the grid today came at Brands Hatch’s final meeting of 2010 in free practice, when James Thompson drove a GPRM-assembled Toyota Avensis to shakedown some of the development parts.
That included the off-the-peg motor, supplied by Swindon Race Engines. It was a new idea of effectively offering a turn-key powerplant. It was an innovation
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that tore down barriers to entry.
Those engines were used in the BTCC for the first full season in 2011 by four cars, even though they were fitted to older-spec S2000 cars, and Andrew Jordan took the maiden win for the motor fitted to his Vauxhall Vectra at Croft in the middle of the season.
By 2012, all but eight of the cars had NGTC motors and Honda became the first of the leading teams to fully commit to a NGTC chassis – and it took the title. By 2013, the top class was entirely NGTC, with older-spec cars able to compete in the Jack Sears Trophy before being phased out altogether.
“We decided to give people the option that if they couldn’t – or didn’t have the budget – to develop and build an engine, there was something else we put in place for them: there was a plug-and-play engine that they could lease,” says Gow. “It also helped because it meant that someone could design a car that didn’t necessarily have the right spec engine in the manufacturer’s road range that they could then use.
“I think any team would tell you that our engine regulations have probably been the biggest triumph of all the things we have done.
“The regulations have been a massive success, by any measure: the number of cars that are competing is strong, and I don’t just mean the amount of cars, but the amount of different types. You wouldn’t have 32 cars on the grid competing if it wasn’t cost-effective. You wouldn’t have the amount of cars that are so close if the regulations weren’t effective. Look at the time difference between first and last on any grid – that is the proof of it.”
All regulations are cyclical, and there needs to be a nod to the future. The road car landscape is changing dramatically, and that will be reflected in the BTCC in years to come, but don’t expect an overnight alteration.
“We are having technical meetings already to look at the way ahead, and absolutely an element of electrification will be on the horizon,” explains Gow. “You have to reflect what is going on in the market and all road cars will have to become hybrid, so we will make ours that too.
“Because our rules work so well, and everyone has made a big investment in the componentry, the next phase of our regulations will merely be an evolution of what we have got. We will still use the current car and add electrification into it. Then we will be ready for the future.”
NGTC is here to stay until 2021, and then things will start to change and a whole new breed of BTCC race car will be born. The fact that the future is in sharp focus now shows the foresight needed to make a series successful, and that is something that the BTCC, in its modern guise, certainly has been.