How the BTCC is tackling drivers who don't pay their bills

July can quite often be a busy time for the British Touring Car Championship - even though it is mostly taken up by the series' now-traditional summer break, which allows the category's broadcaster ITV4 time to cover the Tour de France cycle race.

The reason it is busy is exactly because of the break (although it does incorporate the traditional in-season official two-day Dunlop tyre test at Snetterton). Teams get a chance to thoroughly overhaul their cars, but it is not just the machinery that can come under the spotlight.

Any dissatisfaction between teams and drivers that has existed over the opening part or the campaign has time to brew over the first 15 races, and the break gives a gap for the parties involved to think about the next way forward.

Quite often, and as has been the case over the course of this year, relationships will break down altogether, and that can be for a host of different reasons. Most of those reasons will not be made entirely public, either, and fans are left to read between the lines.

There have been cases where drivers have swapped teams because they have been offered a better deal elsewhere. It is not that they have necessarily fallen out with their present team, but they can feel that there is greener grass ahead of them. This is a situation that has occurred in recent seasons.

Drivers can up sticks and leave for what could be a better future, but there can often be a trail left in their wake that can take a while to unpick.

There is a sticking point though: the terms of each team's licence to complete, their TOCA BTCC Licence (TBL), means a team has to field a car in every single round to maintain ownership of that permit.

That means that if a team decides to change a driver, it has to commit to any new recruit for the remaining part of the campaign.

The teams are in a tricky position when it comes to driver swaps: there has to be a firm deal in place to carry them to the end of the year.

"TOCA will not permit a driver to change teams during a season unless acceptable proof was supplied by both parties that any outstanding matters has been settled"

The TBL was introduced to give teams a tangible value to their entry. With approval from the series bosses, the licences can be loaned or swapped - which gives them a financial value. Having a TBL means teams are likely to have their spot on the entry list looked on preferably when entering the following year's contest.

On the flip side of that, the TBL demands certain things from the teams, such as a guaranteed presence on the grid at each round and a certain level of professionalism and presentation.

But the BTCC bosses have also done something quite interesting to protect the interests of those on the grid. They inserted another line into the TBL requirement at the beginning of this year to protect various parties involved in any messy motor racing divorces.

It reads: "TOCA will not permit a driver to change teams during a season unless acceptable proof was supplied by both parties that any outstanding matters has been settled."

In simple terms, a driver will not be allowed to join another team for the remainder of the season until they have paid their bills to their former squad. And, in turn, a driver will be able to leave if they can prove the team's obligations to them weren't met.

Some fans on social media sometimes struggle to see the reality that is going on. They expect that if Driver A has left a team and there is a seat at Team X, then surely they should just be able to jump ship. The truth in the background is often a lot more complicated.

Other championship bosses are aware that this is a problem, and there is an unwritten rule in some European single-seater championships.

In the FIA-run Formula 3 European Championship, for example, teams have agreed between them that they won't 'poach' each other's talent. There is also an agreement in Euro F3 that a driver must fully settle their bills before they can change teams.

But the F3 rule is only informal. In the BTCC, it is now written in the regulations.

Drivers walking away from teams and leaving them in the financial mire is nothing unusual, sadly. Indeed, I know of a leading team that actually went to the wall because two of its drivers walked away in one season - it was a race-winning team too. Where is the justice in that?

Surely there has to be some way of policing serial contract-breakers?

It does cut both ways though, with some drivers not getting the service that was promised when they signed up for a particular squad. Both sides of the story have to be taken into account.

In the lower levels, particularly in junior single-seater racing where the budgets aren't quite so high, the contracts aren't quite as binding or as water-tight as they could be. That means competitors have a habit of walking away from deals they should honour.

It is a situation that is familiar, but also extremely damaging to motorsport as a whole.

I once advocated that the sport's UK governing body, the Motor Sports Association, should get involved and all contracts should be lodged with it. I wrote a column to that effect in Motorsport News about a decade ago.

I was quickly slapped down and told that the MSA's HQ would have to double in size to accommodate all the paperwork and disputes it was likely to encounter over the course of a single season.

I took the point, but it didn't dissuade me from the opinion that surely there had to be some way of policing competitors - be they teams or drivers - who are serial contract-breakers. There are several of them out there.

In the BTCC, steps have been taken.

Maybe it is time that other championship bosses followed the BTCC's lead and took a proactive role in stopping drivers from doing a moonlight flit to their nearest opponent.