ITV’S MEN SPEAKOUT: BROADCASTERS’ PREDICTIONS
Ahead of the opening british touring car championship meeting of the year, we grill the experts
The British Touring Car Championship never fails to deliver excitement and interest up and down the grid. From the battles at the front to the shifting landscape of the series itself, there is always plenty to chew over.
Who better, then to answer the burning questions than the experts from ITV4, the series broadcasters, who scrutinise every practice, qualifying and race in detail.
We sat down with ITV’S racer sturned-tv personalities Tim Harvey and Paul O’neill, along with lead commentator David Addison, to answer some of the hot topics going into the new BTCC campaign, which kicks off at Brands Hatch this weekend.
MN: Who is going to be champion?
Tim Harvey: “Colin Turkington. Because consistently he is always challenging for the title, and he has all the goods at his disposal. BMW should be slightly quicker this year in a straight line. He has everything he needs to win the championship.” Paul O’neill: “Turkington.”
David Addison: “Turkington. He is a top-class driver in a top-class team. Nothing is left to chance at WSR. They had occasional electrical dramas last year but it is very rare that it has a mechanical fault. Turkington knows how to wrap up points, he knows how to win championships and he rarely makes mistakes. WSR is also competitive at every venue and not every team is.”
TH: “That is true: the bad circuits they had last year weren’t as bad as they have been previously.”
PO: “But hasn’t there been a rule change? Aren’t they heavier this year?”
DA: “But this is WSR. They will get around that.”
TH: “The only thing that could conspire against them this year is the fact that a rear-wheel-drive car won the championship last season and if they and Subaru look like they are too strong early on, there could be political pressure.” MN: But Andrew Jordan has the same car? PO: “He will be a lot closer, but he is not Turkington, is he?” DA: “From Jordan’s point of view, there is nowhere to hide. Last year, there were reasons. He could have said that he was learning about a new team or rear-wheel drive. The good news is that he has got consistency now and he knows the car – however, he has got to deliver. Having said that, he didn’t have an appalling season last year. Three wins in the BTCC is still damn good.” PO: “I think he’ll jump Rob Collard in the pecking order.”
MN: Who do you think is going to be the surprise of the season? PO: “The Team Hard VW CCS are going to be good. If you asking me who I think is going to win the Jack Sears Trophy I would say Bobby Thompson. If you’re asking for someone who is not on the radar, I would say Jake Hill is going to win some races.”
TH: “The obvious candidate for the Jack Sears Trophy is Dan Cammish. He is in a fantastic car and with a fantastic team.”
DA: “I hate this phrase, but the one that will fly under the radar is James Nash because he is better than people give him credit for. He has proved how good he is in TCR and with the BTC Norlin team having proper Honda Civics at its disposal they will have a good year.” MN: How do you think Gordon Shedden’s replacement at Team Dynamics, Dan Cammish, will get on? TH: “There is no doubt about his speed. He has shown in testing that he can match – if not beat Matt Neal – on a lapfor-lap basis, but that doesn’t help you get points. Learning the racecraft and how to accept defeat to other cars will be crucial. Learning how to gain points is going to be the hardest thing for him because so far in his career, 95 per cent of it has been 100 per cent successful.” DA: “I am waiting to be impressed by Cammish. We have seen him be successful in Porsches and Formula Ford, but who has he been up against? You know in the BTCC that the competition is very strong. Dan had days in Porsches that were great, but when I have seen him in the Porsche Supercup – admittedly only at Silverstone – he hasn’t looked as good.
“His qualifying pace will be mega but it is a different form of racing. If he gets duffed up after a couple of rounds and his head drops, then is that going to be easily solved? It will be interesting to see, too, how that affects Dynamics as a team. Over recent years, Gordon Shedden has done most of the winning and Neal has picked up the odd victory here and there. Are we now expecting Matt to do a lot more winning, or is the team anticipating that Cammish will step into the role of Shedden straight away? Where does it place Dynamics?” PO: “Cammish has got the potential to be another [reigning champion and star rookie] Ash Sutton. Like Tim said, we can’t fault his speed but it is about how he accepts defeat and how the other drivers respect him. I know that there are a few people out there who will fire him into the gravel. Some of the older drivers see him as a young lad coming in who could make a show of them. From Oulton Park onwards, I think he will be stunning and he will have less weight because I am not sure he will be fast enough over the opening part of the season.” DA: “Paul is right: some of the old
guard will try to teach him a trick or two. We will see how tough he is.”
MN: Last year there were 13 different race winners. Does that mean it is too easy to win a race, or does it mean it is competitive? PO: “The championship is probably the hardest it has ever been. Everything is close and everyone has had to up their level. People have to work hard for their wins now. That is maybe why you have seen the likes of the older drivers like Neal and Jason Plato not win so much. Turkington is working harder than he ever has to be where he is at the moment.” TH: “It is harder to win the championship, but it might be easier to win races. To win the title is as hard, if not harder than ever, because there are so many people now that can score well in each race. In days gone by, there would only be three or four who were at the front and they would sort it out. You can have an horrendous weekend, not your fault at all, and because there are so many other people doing so well, you can be out of it.” DA: “Although you could have added to that list [of winners] and made it longer last year because there were no wins from drivers that might have had the potential to be up there. Tim is right but the diversity of winners also illustrates the quality of the entry because this isn’t glorified club racing, this is top level racing with people looking at it as a career and coming into it from single-seaters or sportscar racing. There is nobody on that grid who isn’t competitive or who doesn’t deserve to be there.” PO: “It goes to show, with [former championship runner-up] Mat Jackson out of a drive, how hard these lads are working to keep themselves on the grid in the BTCC.” TH: “I am not saying that the guys who win races don’t deserve to win races. There are 15 plus people on the grid who genuinely have a chance.” DA: “The title is hard to win, but I don’t think you could go back through the champions in recent history and say there was a champion who didn’t deserve it. The cream will rise to the top.”
MN: Do you think it is a younger man’s championship these days? DA: “It is becoming that way because more drivers are seeing it as an alternative to a single-seater career. Part of that is television coverage, which means that you have got something to benefit your sponsors – so rather than spend five or 10 years in penury trying to raise money for a career, you can do the BTCC at a high profile. If you fall in with the right team and perhaps do a good job for them, you might be able to make money out of it and Shedden has now proved that you can then go into a different championship. It is becoming a younger man’s sport, yes, but you still have Plato and Neal on the grid and they are still competitive.” TH: “Yes but Plato, Neal and Turkington are really the last of the old guard. Are Jason and Matt championship contenders? On the strength of last year, you would probably say no. You would say that the younger guard – the likes of Tom Ingram, Sutton and Jack Goff – are perhaps ahead of them now. My feeling is that it is a younger man’s game but you need to have a mature head on your shoulders. Sutton proved in two years that with pace and intelligence you can do it.” PO: “When I came into it I was maybe 23 years old. In my head, the older brigade – James Thompson, Yvan Muller, people like that – were intimidating. I just thought they were going to walk away with it. It has changed now! The reason is the way people go about racing now. Tim would have seen this too, but the amount of time the younger guys spend on simulators, and the amount of money that people spend on coaching and practice, is huge. It means the young drivers have accelerated their learning. These kids are learning so fast.” TH: “The other thing is that kids can now get in race winning cars whereas they couldn’t have done that in my day because they were all locked out by professional drivers in manufacturer teams.”
MN: If you were a team manager and you had to pick two drivers to race your cars, which two would you choose? DA: “You would have to go for Turkington. And the second seat… would either be Sutton or Ingram.” TH: “Turkington and Sutton.” PO: “I don’t want to be boring and say Turkington and Sutton… because that is the obvious choice for me.” TH: “But pretend you are a team manager – your business depends on this answer…” PO: “I would say Sutton and Turkington, but if I was looking at longevity I would say Sutton and Jake Hill.” TH: “Well, good luck with that…” n