The top 10 BTCC drivers of 2020

A five-way title decider at Brands Hatch - albeit on the Indy circuit, rather than the Grand Prix track, such was the topsy-turvy nature of the 2020 calendar - attested to a British Touring Car Championship that is alive and well despite all the pandemic could throw at it.

Across nine rounds packed into four months, a typically eventful title battle unfolded with the major players in the drama each wading into battle with a different car and team behind them.

Amid the terrible weather at Brands, it was Ash Sutton who prevailed to secure a second BTCC title, but who impressed our correspondent the most? Here are Autosport's top 10 drivers from 2020.

10. Ollie Jackson (Motorbase Performance)

Championship position: 12th
Wins: 2

It was tempting to put Senna Proctor here, thanks to his press-on style in the new Hyundai. But you can't ignore two wins for Jackson. He made a massive step forward after nearly a decade in the BTCC and backed up Rory Butcher nicely at Motorbase.

In fact, yes, let's ignore those two reversed-grid victories, because Jackson really showed his pace at Brands GP, where he qualified just 0.038 seconds off polesitter Butcher and finished third in race one.

Such is his new status that Motorbase admitted it was aiding development to have another quick driver (beyond Butcher) at the wheel of the Ford. Plus, you have to bear in mind that he's a guy with a rugby-player frame who works for the family brake/clutch business during the week and only becomes a racing driver at weekends.

9. Adam Morgan (Ciceley Motorsport)

Championship position: 8th
Wins: 1

The quiet and modest Lancastrian is as difficult to sight as a badger in the BTCC paddock, but put him behind the wheel of the ancient Mercedes A-Class of Ciceley Motorsport and you can see him expressing himself.

Ciceley and ex-BAR Formula 1 engineer Steve Farrell somehow extracted more speed from the Merc, which will make way for BMW weaponry next season, and Morgan was usually able to put himself in the mix at some point during a race weekend. He held on well under pressure from the big guns for a reversed-grid Oulton win.

The thing is, as Ciceley folk jokingly remark, no one yet knows how good Morgan is, despite his experience, as he's never had anyone else with a reputation in comparable machinery. In 2021 we'll find out with the BMW, and it would be a surprise if he was left wanting in any way.

8. Tom Oliphant (West Surrey Racing)

Championship position: 6th
Wins: 1

He made a huge step forward in his third BTCC season, and his second at West Surrey Racing, to play his part in the success of the BMW-equipped team. Thanks largely to Oliphant's results against those of Matt Neal's in the Honda, the operation wrested the manufacturers' and teams' titles even though Colin Turkington lost the drivers' crown.

Not only was there an improvement in speed, but Oliphant was particularly impressive in defence against the ever-fearsome Ash Sutton at Brands GP and Silverstone, and he made an absolutely stunning pass on Chris Smiley at Knockhill, which team boss Dick Bennetts hailed as the move of the season. That said, there is perhaps a slight tentativeness in battle.

All credit to Oliphant, though: rather than doing the normal thing in this era and becoming a handy 'Silver' in endurance racing (and he'd be very good at that), he's thrown himself into the hurly-burly of the BTCC and can only get better.

7. Jake Hill (MB Motorsport)

Championship position: 7th
Best finish: 2nd

Time and again he set the pace in free practice in the old-spec FK2 Honda Civic, but occasionally overreached from there on. This was exactly what we might expect from a talented racer who had previously never had the programme his ability deserved, but now, thanks to the support of a loyal group of backers plus new team patron Mark Blundell, was free of traditional money worries and armed with a very quick - if ageing - car.

Like Josh Cook, Hill did not have to lug around much success ballast during this campaign, in his case thanks to an alarming early-season sequence of engine failures that hugely frustrated the AmD-run MB Motorsport squad. That and his underlying speed put him into the mix with the serious contenders, where he did get stuck in a fair bit and dented a few bodywork panels.

But he's superbly quick, determined, and getting better all the time, and showed character to bounce back from those engine dramas.

6. Josh Cook (BTC Racing)

Championship position: 9th
Wins: 3

After finishing fourth in 2019, the Bath redhead was regarded as a proper contender for 2020 as he stayed with BTC Racing and its Hondas. But it all went wrong from the first racing lap (pitched into the Donington gravel by contact with Hill).

A quite unbelievable series of events then overtook him: affected by the Honda unreliability outbreak at Brands GP; failure of the ride-height test at Oulton, costing him a win; a sequence of shunts at Knockhill that weren't his fault. At this point, he was 16th in the table, and there had also been what we might call a 'communications breakdown' between BTC and Civic-builder Dynamics over availability of development parts.

From here, he rose to ninth, and over the final five rounds scored more points than all bar Dan Cammish, Tom Ingram and Sutton, including a superb double win at Croft. Over the season, Cook led more miles than champion Sutton - behind only Ingram and Turkington.

5. Rory Butcher (Motorbase Performance)

Championship position: 5th
Wins: 3

The Scot is the first to point the finger at himself for making a fair few mistakes this season, and that's encouraging because by admitting them he can eradicate them in years ahead. And there will surely be many more seasons for him as a leading title contender.

Testing showed that the new fourth-generation Ford Focus built by Motorbase Performance was a potent machine. Eyebrows were raised by the performance of the Mountune engines too, but clearly the whole package was good and straight-line speed was always within TOCA's strict tolerances.

Butcher's blistering speed put him in the mix at nearly every round, but the season was really knocked by his punctures on a Brands GP weekend he dominated on pace. The problem was Motorbase had never had a car on which it could switch the tyres on; now, in scorching weather, it had a well-designed Focus with too much grip...

4. Dan Cammish (Team Dynamics)

Championship position: 3rd
Wins: 4

It's so hard to separate the top four from the 2020 season that it's really tough on Cammish to place him at the bottom of the leading quartet. Without those power-steering and engine failures at the Brands GP round in August, he could have taken the crown.

Following his second consecutive final-round title knockout, he said that last year's finale left him disappointed, but this time he was going home content and happy with what he'd achieved, that he'd driven the wheels off the Team Dynamics-run Honda Civic FK8 at every opportunity and that he couldn't really identify having slipped up in any way.

Apart from a wobble at Oulton Park, he was pretty much right. This year he blew away some very strong fellow FK8 Civic drivers and he is indisputably one of the class acts of the latest BTCC era.

3. Tom Ingram (Speedworks Motorsport)

Championship position: 4th
Wins: 3

Without that broken wishbone causing a failure of the ride-height test and costing him pole at Croft, he could have finally won the title with Speedworks Motorsport and the ever-improving Toyota Corolla. As Ingram himself said, "four non-scores was always going to be difficult to overcome", and none of them were his fault: an innocent victim of a first-lap tangle at Brands GP; a driveshaft failure at Oulton; and a puncture at Silverstone while leading followed by a collision in the next race.

Ingram had that Corolla absolutely on the edge all season, was spectacular to watch, especially considering it's a front-wheel-drive car, and led comfortably more miles than anyone else - 158 to the 129 of next-up Turkington. That stat, allied to the fact that he was operating in a single-car team (no one else has ever raced the NGTC Corolla) gets him the nod over Cammish.

2. Colin Turkington (West Surrey Racing)

Championship position: 2nd
Wins: 5

The four-time champion and the WSR team were worried that the cold-and-wet COVID-enforced late end to the season would scupper their chances with the BMW 330i M Sport, because rear-wheel-drive cars aren't as good at switching on their tyres as the front-driven weapons around them. After a rare Turkington gaffe at the October Croft, those fears only increased.

But they were proved wrong at Snetterton, where track temp was so cold that no one could switch on the tyres, and the Northern Irishman put in the classiest and most successful weekend anyone achieved all season. It was vintage Turkington: swift, unflurried, with a little bit of luck.

Then it all went wrong at the Brands finale, and he watched the title slip away. Before then, he drove and went about his race weekends absolutely as the consummate professional he's always been. His Silverstone win, in particular, was a masterclass in patience and execution.

1. Ash Sutton (Laser Tools Racing)

Championship position: 1st
Wins: 5

Brilliant all season, and was the most exciting driver around. Don't forget, this programme was thrown together from the ashes of the BMR squad, with Sutton and his old crew transferring under the umbrella of Laser Tools Racing, youthful BMR engineer Antonio Carrozza redesigning the Infiniti Q50, and then the briefest of testing programmes before they rocked up at the belated opening round at Donington.

Sutton leapt, yumped, yawed and sometimes panel-bashed (his racing is hard, but almost always fair) that Infiniti around the acrobatic circuits of the UK. Partly owing to its lack of development, it was rarely the quickest car, but Sutton was able to recover from poor grid positions and this put him in the frame to snatch the title at the last round.

PLUS: The Villeneuve-esque 'engineer's dream' who lit up BTCC 2020

He did make some errors, most notably at Croft, where Turkington was already out and Sutton threw away a good result - he kicked himself hard for that, but it was a stunning season.