Five key plotlines to follow in the 2021 BTCC

With a host of new team-driver combinations, new cars and returning faces, the 2021 British Touring Car Championship has no shortage of storylines.

Autosport magazine's BTCC preview issue, out this week, features an interview with three-time champion Gordon Shedden ahead of his comeback with Team Dynamics and an assessment of Ciceley Motorsport's prospects, the Lancastrian team having acquired the first customer examples of the WSR-built BMW 330i M Sport with which Colin Turkington claimed the 2019 title.

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Ahead of the new season getting underway at Thruxton this weekend, Autosport picks out five of the other major storylines to follow in 2021.

1. Can Sutton and Infiniti improve on their title-winning form?

Ashley Sutton, Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Ash Sutton won the BTCC title in 2020 with an Infiniti Q50 that had been barely tested on the track before the season started. So what can he do in 2021 with a winter of development behind the Japanese machine? As he points out: “We rolled out last year and didn’t want to disrupt the rhythm.”

With the Infiniti a winner in the opening round at Donington Park, there was little motivation in going experimental on set-up. After all, the new-for-2020 Laser Tools Racing/BMR Racing alliance knew it was already in the ballpark. To be fair, there hasn’t been a great deal of testing in this build-up either.

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“We’ve been keeping ourselves to ourselves,” admits Sutton. “We did a shakedown at Donington in mid-April, just getting back into it. Then we rolled out at Snetterton a week later, with the intention of getting mileage under our belts, and did 500km, which is a lot for these cars. It was nice to actually do some testing this year.”

“This is the first proper testing we’ve done with the Infiniti,” adds Sutton’s engineer Antonio Carrozza, speaking at the Silverstone media day that followed two days after the Snetterton run. “It’s the first chance we’ve had to play with the car and push the boundaries.”

While Sutton was very much run by his old BMR Subaru crew in 2020, and Aiden Moffat by his existing LTR staff, there is more BMR influence for Moffat this year. Dan Millard engineered Sutton to the title in 2017, then joined West Surrey Racing and did the same role for Colin Turkington in 2019, but he’s back in the fold now and working with Moffat. Meanwhile, the third Team Hard-crewed LTR Infiniti of Carl Boardley has Richard Owen on engineering duties – last involved in the BTCC with Michael Crees in 2019, he’s the guy who designed the infamous Volvo 850 estate of 1994.

And how will the Q50 cope if and when it has to carry the newly increased maximum success ballast of 75kg?

“We’re sort of trying to compare ourselves to the worst-case scenario,” alludes Sutton, “and it’s been handling every situation we throw at it. The little changes we’ve made have given me a fire in my belly – or relit it maybe!”

2. Plato closes in on century

Jason Plato, Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Two-time BTCC champion Jason Plato enters the new season just three victories away from a magic century of wins. The 53-year-old could well have got there last year given a fair wind for the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra team, but then COVID struck and Plato and the team decided to pause their commercial contracts for a year, with Plato sitting out the campaign ready for a return in 2021.

That kept Plato sat on 97 wins, the last of which came in the 2019 season finale, while PMR ran a revolving cast of young drivers (plus Rob Austin) in a single-car effort. But the Astra appears to be bang on the pace in testing, and Plato has been joined in the line-up by Dan Lloyd, who has his biggest BTCC opportunity yet after being a title contender in the hotly contested TCR Europe series at the wheel of a Honda.

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“He is going to be fast and he is going to be a pain in the arse, and quite honestly that’s how it should be,” says Plato.

Will Lloyd’s presence push Plato on to that 100th win, or could he be a hindrance if he’s too much of a pain in the Plato backside? Either way, the veteran says he’s not too bothered: “In all honesty it’s just a number. If I get to 100 I’ll want more. But certainly I don’t want to stop at 99 – I do want to get to 100. The only downside is it will cost me a few quid as I’ll have to have a party.”

3. Turkington and WSR strive to address weakness

Colin Turkington, Team BMW BMW 330i M Sport

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

What do you do if you’ve just lost the BTCC title after your car didn’t like wet, cold conditions at the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit finale? If you’re West Surrey Racing, you take Colin Turkington and your BMW 330i M Sport back to Kent as soon as you can to sort it out on another cold and wet day.

“We started two weeks after the Brands final, and worked on things we didn’t like to try and improve the package,” says four-time champion Turkington, who is joined for a third year in the WSR line-up by Tom Oliphant, and the returning Stephen Jelley, back in the Sunbury team’s fold for the first time since 2009.

Since the circuits opened for business in 2021, WSR has been testing twice each at Brands Hatch and Silverstone, and once at Snetterton.

“We’ve had good mileage,” says Turkington. “We’re just looking for the small gains and not trying to reinvent the wheel.”

Turkington is unsure at present about the effect of the maximum 75kg success ballast – the 330 has never raced with that weight. “You won’t properly find out until you get in a race situation,” he says.

What he possibly will find out about is set-ups of Ralts and Reynards from the 1980s and 1990s vintage days of British F3. WSR boss Dick Bennetts was renowned as ‘The Guru’ back in the day, and Jelley has taken his engineer from Team Parker Racing, former David Price Racing and Paul Stewart Racing man Andy Miller, with him to the team…

4. Team merger could put title shot into focus

Jake Hill, MB Motorsport Ford Focus ST

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

It’s all been going on at Motorbase over the winter, following a hugely encouraging maiden season for the fourth-generation Ford Focus ST in 2020. Founder David Bartrum sold the team to AmD boss Shaun Hollamby – whose team had been running Honda Civic FK2s in 2020 for Jake Hill and Sam Osborne under the name MB Motorsport (in deference to commercial partner Mark Blundell) – and Osborne’s father Pete. It was effectively a merger between the two teams, and four Ford Focuses would be run, two under the Motorbase name for Osborne and Andy Neate, two as MB for Hill and Ollie Jackson.

Recently, however, Hollamby has withdrawn from the scene, although remains very much involved in Hill’s career. And now Bartrum is back in a management role on race weekends. With long-time lieutenant Oly Collins still on board, it’s almost as if nothing has changed, except there’s a bunch of AmD/MB people in the garage, including sporting director Blundell. Also behind the scenes, Jackson and his father Paul bought in to engine supplier Mountune, whose Ford powerplants were looked upon with green-eyed envy by some of the opposition in 2020, during the autumn.

But all we care about is what happens on track, right? Well, Hill should definitely lead the charge, and he and engineer Craig Pawley have found that their Civic set-ups transfer nicely to the Focus.

“Croft was amazing,” relates Hill of a test where many of the leading teams were present. “We had a really, really good day there. We were quickest, which we were surprised about because we felt there was more left in the car.”

5. Big names in new cars

Tom Ingram, Excelr8 Trade Price Cars Hyundai i30 Fastback N Performance

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

There’s a whole host of intriguing new driver/team/car combinations for 2021, with some of the BTCC’s brightest up-and-coming talents taking the start this weekend at Thruxton in machinery they’d never driven until a few weeks ago.

Foremost among these is Tom Ingram, probably the most complete driver on the grid not to have yet won a BTCC title. He has transferred from the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla equipe to the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N squad, and has taken his Speedworks engineer Spencer Aldridge with him.

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“The team have welcomed us with open arms, and Spencer’s been given pretty much free rein,” says Ingram. “He’s done so much to the car over the winter he’s almost redesigned it and started again to all intents and purposes. He’s done an amazing job, and the good thing is we’re not trying to make it a Toyota Corolla; we’re not trying to make it a Toyota Avensis; we’re making a Hyundai i30 N Fastback even better.”

Into Ingram’s place at Speedworks has arrived Rory Butcher, fresh from a season in a Motorbase Ford in which he was an outside title contender going into the final round.

“We think we’re where we need to be,” says Speedworks boss Christian Dick, whose team has expanded to a second Toyota for Sam Smelt, and has recruited tin-top engineering veteran Paul Ridgway to replace Aldridge. “We’ve got a good package and quick car, but we’ve got to make sure it works for Rory.”

And then there’s Jack Goff. A regular at the sharp end in his Eurotech Honda days, he’s languished over the past two years in Team Hard’s Volkswagen CCs, but they’ve finally been put out to pasture and replaced by the all-new Cupra Leon, which Goff took to second quickest on the Silverstone media day.

“The car feels good, and it’s the fastest we’ve ever been around Silverstone,” he says. “We can make a small tweak and it’s better, and that’s all you can ask for. But I’m not unrealistic: at the moment, I’d be pretty happy to be in the top 10.”

Jack Goff, Team HARD Cupra Leon

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images