Why the 2020 BTCC season can still be a corker
The season is late starting and some of the leading contenders, including the championship's very own Mr Marmite, are missing. But BTCC pundit Tim Harvey reckons there's still plenty to get excited about ahead of this weekend's first round
It's four months overdue, but the start of the British Touring Car Championship is here, and a slightly depleted field will take to the track at Donington Park this weekend for the first of what is scheduled to be nine triple-headers squeezed in between now and mid-November.
As reigning champions, Colin Turkington and the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad have to start as favourites, but there is a high number of unknowns - different driver/car combinations, new machines making their debuts, post-coronavirus rule changes... and people wearing masks.
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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