When was the BTCC best? NGTC vs Super Touring

The British Touring Car Championship has been going through something of a purple patch of late. Grids have been routinely in the mid to high-20s this season and we've already had six different winners.

The Next Generation Touring Cars, first introduced in 2011, have brought more teams and marques onto the grid, and fans still flock to the circuits in their tens of thousands. Thanks to the return of Colin Turkington we also have four ex-champions, plus up-and-coming stars like Andrew Jordan.

It has been suggested several times in the paddock that the BTCC is currently stronger than at any time since the end of Super Touring and that could be true.

But how does the current grid compare to that heyday in the 1990s? Many fans look back fondly at the time when works teams filled grids, the cars were sophisticated works of art, and some of the leading names gained national recognition.

Is that just rose tinted spectacles or was it really better back then?

THE DRIVERS
Super Touring 5/5
NGTC 3/5

When it comes to the drivers, the current field can't compete with the best of Super Touring in the mid to late-1990s.

Jason Plato and Matt Neal, both race winners in Super Touring, have now been joined up at the front by the likes of Gordon Shedden and Colin Turkington, but the depth of quality isn't as strong.

That's not to say the current grid is weak - we have former Ginetta champions Frank Wrathall and Adam Morgan, plus Renault Clio Cup title winners Dave Newsham and Jack Goff who have all graduated to the BTCC, and rightly so.

But in the 1990s the series had ex-Formula 1 drivers like Gabriele Tarquini, Derek Warwick and Gianni Morbidelli (not to mention cameos from Nigel Mansell), racers that had fallen off the single-seater ladder near the top, including Alain Menu, Rickard Rydell and Yvan Muller, and sportscar stars like Tom Kristensen and David Brabham.

Some were successful in tin-tops, some were not, but their pedigree prior to arriving in the BTCC has to be considered higher than that of the current crop.

There's one easy explanation for that: manufacturer involvement. With Super Touring being a global phenomenon, car companies spent more and more money trying to win. And that meant employing the best drivers available and almost the entire grid could be considered professional.

The world is a different place now, with a vast majority of BTCC teams being privateers, many of which have to find drivers bringing money.

Being a pay-driver doesn't mean someone lacks talent, but it is inevitable that worthy drivers often look elsewhere if they want to make motorsport their profession.

THE CARS
Super Touring 5/5
NGTC 3/5

The contrast between the machines of the two eras is also marked. At its height, Super Touring featured state-of-the-art specials using exotic materials and producing significant downforce. Current NGTC machines have more power, but are heavier and use many spec parts.

A quick pace comparison is interesting, looking at Thruxton and Croft, the two circuits that have changed little in the interim and had dry qualifying sessions this year.

At Thruxton, Jordan's 2013 pole was 1m16.527s. That is almost identical to Alain Menu's Renault Laguna pole time in the May 1997 BTCC round, but well away from the 1m12s the fastest runners managed after the Hampshire circuit was resurfaced for the 2000 season.

Similarly, Turkington's 1m24.465s Croft pole is some way off the 1m20s and 1m21s the late Super Tourers managed there in period. BTCC cars have never been quicker than they were at the end of the last millennium.

Triple BTCC champion Matt Neal has experience of both types of car and reckons the driving styles required were quite different.

"The NGTC is heavier, but more powerful," he says. "The Super Tourers had narrower tyres, but had aero so they were more on a knife-edge. The more modern cars are easier to drive.

"They reckoned they needed big name drivers to develop the Super Tourers and get the best out of them."

Jonny Westbrook, who engineers for Frank Wrathall in the BTCC and runs a Vauxhall Cavalier in his own Super Touring Trophy series, points out the older cars arguably have more finesse.

"The NGTC is cost-capped so a lot of the kit is more cheap and cheerful, though not in a bad way," he says. "The Super Tourer is more like working on a period F1 car - everything's to the limit, money no object."

THE COST
Super Touring 2/5
NGTC 4/5

The downside of big manufacturer involvement of course is cost. Super Touring cars started out at a sensible level, but as they got ever more trick, spending spiralled out of hand. Ford is reputed to have spent £10-12 million on winning the BTCC in 2000.

That level of spending wasn't sustainable then - the manufacturers left in their droves after 1999, forcing the BTCC to introduce new, more cost-effective, regulations for 2001 - and is even less likely now given the state of the world economy.

Privateer Super Touring entries obviously survived on a lot less, but when the factory teams left there were never going to be enough of them to sustain a grid.

NGTC on the other hand was introduced by BTCC boss Alan Gow to bring down costs and allow teams to enter the series without requiring a manufacturer. Spec parts, although troublesome at times, have been integral to the concept and are a marked contrast to the bespoke engineering on the exotic Super Tourers Westbrook describes.

The cars have not turned out to be as cheap as first hoped, but it's hard to argue that the overall aim has not been achieved.

And even now, teams can build an NGTC machine for less than half of what some of the top squads spent to build a Super Tourer. Throw in other savings, like a control tyre instead of a tyre war, and it's easy to see why a top NGTC team operates on a fraction of the budgets seen in the late-1990s.

Triple Eight boss Ian Harrison, who ran Vauxhall's works team at the end of Super Touring and now heads MG's NGTC programme, is happy the BTCC changed.

"They were completely over the top bits of kits," he says of the Super Tourers. "I don't miss them at all - they cost £375,000 to build and took three months to put together.

"It was not necessary. The racing is as good now as it was with those cars. The technology isn't as good, but who cares about that?"

THE COMPETITION
Super Touring 4/5
NGTC 4/5

How you rate the two eras in terms of competition is rather dependent on you personal preferences. If you're a purist, Super Touring - with the odd performance tweak, say to equalise front-wheel-drive and 4WD cars - is more likely to appeal, even if it increases the chance that one car might run off and hide.

But if you are happy for turbo boost equalisation, success ballast (which did appear later in Super Touring) and reversed-grid races to keep things close and entertaining, then NGTC ticks the box.

Here's a table showing how close the BTCC was in 1997-2000, the last four years of Super Touring, and the last season and a half, in which the NGTC machines have been prominent. Figures are averages across each season.

      Pole margin  1st-10th qual gap  Winning margin
1997    0.236s          1.050s           2.335s
1998    0.234s          1.082s           2.947s
1999    0.176s          1.216s           4.992s
2000    0.190s          2.074s           3.105s
2012    0.251s          1.056s           1.798s
2013    0.203s          1.026s           2.516s

(after six rounds)

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these figures is how similar they are, particularly in qualifying. The winning margin differences appear to support NGTC, but it should be remembered that many Super Touring races were longer than BTCC events today, and pitstops were a feature at the end of the era, so bigger winning margins are to be expected.

It could be argued that the various NGTC equalisation measures have worked in keeping the grid close at a time when the driver and team levels probably vary more across the grid than they did in the late 1990s.

THE VERDICT

NGTC was always going to struggle against Super Touring in this contest, but it perhaps gets closer with the head than it does with the heart.

The quality of the drivers and spectacle of the cars - the NGTC turbos can't get close to the sound of a fully wound-up Super Tourer - means we will always look back on the 1990s as a golden age of touring car racing.

It also had global appeal, increasing the quality yet further, and introducing the possibility of the best tin-top racers in the world going head-to-head in events like Bathurst and the World Cup.

NGTC looks less enticing by comparison, even though the races are often dramatic, but it is a product of its time. If one looks at BTCC history as a whole, it is Super Touring that is the odd one out, not NGTC.

That millions of pounds were ever spent developing and racing 'touring cars' in a domestic tin-top series is remarkable in itself. NGTC has aimed to make sure a large number of manufacturers are represented, even without works support, and that the championship remains sustainable, and achievable for those lower down the national motorsport ladder. And so far, it has achieved those things.

But pragmatic is never as exciting as extravagance, which is why drivers and fans alike still look back on Super Touring as the high-watermark of touring car competition.