The British Touring Car Championship is half way through a season which involves: seven former champions; fresh young talent; controversy and the mad wheel to wheel racing that fans expect from the BTCC. Even though the BTCC is growing all the time it’s still not a form of racing that everyone seems to know about. Which is shame because I think it’s the best out there.
To start with this season involves seven champions. First up the very experienced trio of Matt Neal, who made his debut back in 1991 and is 05, 06 and 2011 champion, next up Jason Plato, he made his debut in 1997 and is 2001 and 2010 champion. Alain Menu returned to the championship this season many years after making his debut in 1992 and being 1997 and 2000 champion.
Then we have Fabrizio Giovanardi, he made his debut in 2006 and won the championship 2007 and 2008 and the hearts of all BTCC fans with his bubbly Italian personality. Colin Turkington came back into the championship in 2013 after winning the title in 2009 and making his debut in 2002. Gordon Shedden won the title in 2012 and is team mate of the experienced Neal, he made his debut in 2001. Last but not least defending champion Andrew Jordan who won the title brilliantly in 2013 and only made his debut in 2008. Other notable names this season are Árón Smith, Sam Tordoff, Jack Goff and the fans favourite Rob Austin in his famous ‘Sherman’ car.
The format of a BTCC weekend is two practice sessions and qualifying on a Saturday, then three shorter races throughout the day on the Sunday with many fantastic support races in between. The racing of course is amazing all through the day however race 3 tends to be the most exciting due to the reverse grid where positions 6-10 are put in a bowl and the driver that finished in 10th picks the number that goes onto pole for race 3.
Like any motorsport it is not without its moments of controversy, this season it seems to be down to the fact that certain cars on the grid are rear wheeled drive. This means they tend to get better starts of the grid and on certain circuits an advantage but it is worth pointing out this is a minority of the tracks and of the cars really. The Ebay Motors car of Colin Turkington has been one of, if not the strongest car this season so far and is of course a wheel rear drive car, this lead to the moaning of other drivers in particular Jason Plato who isn’t accepting that his car isn’t quite where it should be at this stage of the season. So all the rear wheel drive cars have been forced to put in a longer first gear meaning they lose the advantage off the starts and it’s caused a few problems already, they’ve only used it at one race meeting so far, so for the second half of the season watch out for the cars of Turkington, Foster, Collard, Austin and Abbot who are the fastest RWD runners.
There is of course famous rivalries in the sport and the feud that is continuing is Matt Neal and Jason Plato, two champions that always seem to find themselves together on the track and up their game and pull out some old tricks when they’re racing each other. It did once almost end in a punch up after a race and many other incidents, far too many to explain, therefore I would recommend looking their battles up on YouTube. It is in the modern era an argument that has passed on to Matt Neal’s teammate Gordon Shedden, better known as ‘Flash’ in BTCC. The last event was incident packed and many drivers getting in each other’s way and some took the arguments to Twitter but when they return at Snetterton in two weeks time, there are scores to be settled. In particular Gio and Jordan, Plato and Menu, Austin and Neal and Austin and Morgan. It was a weekend where every other car seemed to be attracted to Austin’s Sherman. As Austin has the best fan base in BTCC, his fans will be looking for him to make a big impact after the summer break.
As Tim Harvey the 1992 champion said at the start of the season: ‘it’s going to be won not on your good days but how good your bad days are’.
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