SHOULD ALL ANIMALS REALLY BE EQUAL?
Tom Ingram had an explanation for his dynamite starts at Thruxton. With Colin Turkington’s eighth-placed BMW the highest-starting rear-wheel-drive car on the grid for race one, and Ash Sutton’s fifth-placed Infiniti filling that role for race two, the front-driven machinery wasn’t going to get swamped at the start. “My headspace was a little bit different,” he explained. “It was on overtaking someone rather than waiting to be overtaken by a rear-wheel-drive car.”
Thruxton never usually suits rear-driven cars anyway. You could hear the outside rear tyres chirruping angrily as the BMWS and Infinitis absorbed the load on the corner exits in the Complex – close your eyes and you could dream it was a Vince Woodman-versus-gordon Spice battle in Group 1 Capris – but BTCC organiser TOCA had a further card up its sleeve: from Thruxton onwards, the RWD cars had been given a further handicap on boost up to 78mph away from the startline, up from 6.5% to 11.5%.
The litmus test here was Tom
Oliphant starting his BMW from third for the reversed-grid race.
Usually, you’d expect him to have cruised past the front-row
BTC Racing Hondas and then, perhaps, we’d have had an entertaining race as the lighter
Civics swarmed all over the
330i M Sport. In reality, Oliphant made no progress, and was even elbowed down to fourth by the FWD Ford of
Rory Butcher at the Complex.
So in that sense, TOCA’S latest equalisation calculation has been a success. But you could also argue that eradicating as many variables as you can, and attempting to give everyone equal performance at every stage of competition, creates duller racing. Certainly, Thruxton was the most processional event of the season so far, although for some reason the
BTCC seems alone among motorsport categories in traditionally not having great racing here.
Dick Bennetts, boss of the West Surrey Racing team that runs the BMWS, was predictably angry – and you could say rightfully so, considering a team chooses its package on its strengths and weaknesses. “Rear-wheel drive has its pluses and minuses, and they took away our plus,” he grumbled. “It’s definitely hobbled our performance off the line and made it really difficult for us,” added Turkington. “It’s the second phase of the start where we have lost so much acceleration, and that then leaves you very vulnerable.
It’s been a big handicap this weekend.”