How a BTCC Alliance swept the field away in 2023

Motorbase Performance is no more. But, then again, it hadn’t really been pure Motorbase anyway. Since 2021, the team had been operating in the British Touring Car Championship with a significant contingent from the old AmD squad; since 2022, with the addition of the nucleus behind Ash Sutton’s three titles at BMR. ‘Time for a new name’, thought owner Pete Osborne as he neared the end of his third year at the helm of the company.

“We decided to sit down, looked at lots of different things, looked at everybody’s names and initials to try and put them together,” smiles Osborne. “And then we said, ‘Hold on, we’re an alliance of people, we’re together, and it works for us’. Hence why Oly came up with this great idea of Alliance Racing.”

The ‘Oly’ to whom Osborne refers is long-time Motorbase team manager Oly Collins, and Autosport is sitting down on the eve of the Brands Hatch season finale – the team’s first weekend under the Alliance name – with him, Osborne and engineering wizard Antonio Carrozza to discuss what has become a BTCC phenomenon.

In 2023, this Motorbase/AmD/BMR supergroup gelled spectacularly under the banner of NAPA Racing (logistics magnate Osborne is adamant that his team’s commercial partners are an equal part of his ‘Alliance’), and the previously unloved Ford Focus ST sledgehammered its way to 16 race wins out of 30, a fourth drivers’ title for Sutton, a convincing teams’ crown, and a narrow manufacturers’ victory over BMW.

Who would have thought that in 2022, when Sutton drove the wheels off an unwieldy beast of a Focus to finish as championship runner-up? Towards the end of that season, paddock gossip was rife that Carrozza was to be charged with a return to his and Sutton’s rear-wheel-drive roots by developing a car to bring Audi back to the BTCC.

“We’d got a great dialogue going with Audi, which was really positive,” recalls Osborne. “We weren’t going to be the usual team asking for a big payout; we wanted their support, expertise and their cars, a bit of a nod for what Tony needed to get on the table to get going. And we got all that, and it was looking very, very close that we’d be running Audis, and then we came up against the other teams.”

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The former Motorbase team had hoped to ditch the Focus after a tough 2022, but plans to run Audis hit the buffers

The target was the Audi A5, which is available for the road in four-wheel-drive and front-wheel-drive formats. The problem was two conflicting regulations within the BTCC’s NGTC ruleset that made it impossible for the car to comply: one states that if a base model has a two-wheel-drive derivative, the racing version must adopt that format, in this case FWD; the other is that a base model with an in-line engine, such as the A5, must be RWD.

Motorbase therefore needed the blessing of the other teams to press on with a RWD version of a car that wasn’t available in RWD format for the road. Unsurprisingly, some weren’t keen. They are perhaps regretting this in light of what happened with the Focus…

Carrozza laughs at the thought of Sutton getting out of the Focus for what he hoped would be the last time at the 2022 finale: “When it went in the truck last year, I remember the door shutting, I looked at Ash, and he said, ‘Thank God I’m not going to drive that thing again!’” Osborne jests: “At one point we wanted to set it on fire, didn’t we?”

"I’m not too proud to say, ‘Oh well I’m not going to do that, because someone else has already done it’. If it’s a good idea, it’s a good idea" Tony Carrozza

So, with the Audi plan foiled, what were they going to do now? Sutton, Carrozza, Collins and Osborne sat up late at night on their computers.

“That Zoom meeting that we had, I think we started it at half eight in the evening, and we were still on it at about half 11, and we were trying to find every bloody rear-wheel-drive car we could,” chortles Collins. “Everyone was on Google: ‘Oh what about this car? What about this one?’

“We went round and round and round and there was this air of reluctance. Pete got to the point where he needed to wrap the meeting up, and really subtly had to say, I think we might have to reserve the idea that we might have to end up running the Focus…”

Osborne takes up the story: “And then it was, ‘Tony, what can you do?’ And I expected like, ‘Not bloody run that Focus’. But he went, ‘Leave it with me, I’ll come back to you’. And I said, ‘Don’t worry about the money, just go away and tell me what you can do’. And that was the nice thing – he came back and said, ‘This, this, this and this, and that’s how much it’s going to cost you’. And I’m like, ‘All right, I can make a decision now’.”

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Autosport's Simmons sits in as Collins, Osborne and Carrozza explain the genesis of Alliance's 2023 dominance

Key to the development of the Focus was the implementation of the BMR quartet of Sutton, Carrozza, support engineer Tom Powell and number-one mechanic Brent Yule into a team whose technical leadership had for some years been in the hands of James Mundy, who still engineers Dan Cammish.

Collins, addressing Carrozza, points out: “You came into an open environment and offered an equally open environment, and one thing that us as a team have always been is very transparent, nothing’s secret, no one’s allowed to run on their own agenda. It was a relief when Tony and that car crew came in and it was, ‘I hope they’re going to be as open as we’ve always been’. And from day one it was a very easy and open atmosphere to work in, where everybody was happy to listen to each other.

“Tony said, ‘I will listen to every single person here, I won’t necessarily take your view as gospel, but I will always listen to it and I will make my own mind up as to whether or not I agree with it’. So it’s very open to suggestion, but equally we’ll take ideas from anybody else, compute them in Tony’s way, and then implement them in the way we’ve seen that’s been successful.”

Of the start to work over the 2022-23 winter, Carrozza explains: “We sat down with everybody at the factory, all of the full-time staff around the car, and I just had a pen and paper, and we went through every area of development we could possibly go and I took suggestions from everyone, and that included operational things, things people have seen on previous cars that they’ve done.

“We’ve got such a wealth of experience, and these people have worked in motorsport for a combined 200 years or something. So somewhere in there are nuggets of what people have done that have worked. I’m not too proud to say, ‘Oh well I’m not going to do that, because someone else has already done it’. If it’s a good idea, it’s a good idea.

“That was a completely open book; anyone can put an idea in. We didn’t use all of them, because you never would, but we don’t want to be excluding anyone from the development we’ve had – it’s been a proper team effort.”

Is it true that every single bodywork panel on the Focus was changed and re-homologated for 2023?

“Well…” pauses Collins, looking at Carrozza. “Nearly. A couple were left alone. Rear wheelarches you didn’t re-homologate, rear bumper we kept the same. But other than that they looked at every panel, every inlet duct, every location of every header tank, every catchtank, floor.

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Sutton was the dominant force of BTCC 2023 with a totally revamped package

“A lot of it was actually the application of it, of how it was fitted and the reliability of the fitment. Some real back-to-basics stuff that was brought in. Again, that came from that meeting where we had everybody in the workshop. It meant that the guys who are actually fitting the components could say simple things, like, ‘I really like this, but if you could just change those bolts for these kind of bolts, could we do that?’ ‘Well yeah, why?’ And then there’d be an explanation as to why. It was details.”

“I could stand here now and, hand on heart, probably add up 10 things that bring us to where we are, the real major ones,” adds Carrozza. “None of them are enormous, but you combine lots of incremental gains together, you do find this overall package. We sat and looked at where we struggled last year, Croft being one of them.

“That Croft weekend was very disheartening for us. We couldn’t move forwards, we couldn’t race, we didn’t qualify well. ‘What do we need from the car at Croft? What do we need from the car at Thruxton? It was obviously very good there, but why was it good?’ And you’re just investigating all of these different areas and trying to combine them all together to make a package that works at every circuit. It’s very easy to go, ‘We’re going to make a car that goes round Silverstone’. That’s brilliant, but you need it to work at nine other places.”

"It wasn’t just top-end power, because often that’s not the be-all and end-all. You need driveability, you need something that the driver’s comfortable with wherever they are in the rev range" Tony Carrozza

Another key was the engine work carried out by Mountune. The company is owned these days by the family of former Motorbase driver Ollie Jackson, who stood down from the BTCC for 2023 to return to the Carrera Cup GB. He was replaced by Dan Rowbottom, who brought his Cataclean budget – another feather in the commercial cap for the team – alongside the incumbent Sutton, Cammish, and Osborne’s son Sam.

“A massive amount,” enthuses Carrozza when asked about the significance of Mountune’s development. “We looked last year inwardly, but also you have to look at who your competition is. We looked at everywhere that Hyundai was strong and the reasons we thought it was strong, and you start to come up with your own package of weaknesses, and that list we came up with, it had engine in there as a big part.

“But it wasn’t just top-end power, because often that’s not the be-all and end-all. You need driveability, you need something that the driver’s comfortable with wherever they are in the rev range, and that formed a big part of our, almost, scope of work to Mountune. ‘Here’s what we need. How we achieve that… we’ve got a few different things that I can propose and we’d like to do, but you are the engine supplier.’

“Obviously I had no influence on cam design, but I had an influence on what I wanted shape of torque curves to look like. But they’re the ones that have done the work and come up with essentially where they are.”

“Mountune are as passionate as we are,” endorses Osborne. “Their whole team are integrated into us as a business as one. Every single supplier that we’ve got, we consider them part of us as a business, and we can’t deliver what we’re delivering on the track without their help and support. Mountune are imperative to that and all their guys are just phenomenal.”

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The work of Mountune founder David Mountain and crew has been crucial in the Focus's improvement

The perception among some is that Osborne’s passion has fired limitless resources into his family’s hobby. The guy radiates cheerful Yorkshire bonhomie, but the stereotype is that northerners don’t like being separated from their brass without good reason, and he’s no exception.

“The thing was, it wasn’t a bottomless budget,” asserts Carrozza. “It was, ‘Here’s my wish list, and here’s what the wish list will cost’.”

Collins: “And there were a few things on there that you said, ‘In an absolutely mindblowingly ideal world we’d do that, but the amount of money that’s going to cost to achieve that, I don’t think that’s wise because it’s too much money for too small a gain’. So there was an element of reality that came with it.”

Carrozza: “I put it as ‘cost per tenth’. It’s value of everything.”

Collins, now addressing Osborne: “You’ll moan about spending a fiver on something that’s a waste; you won’t moan about spending £50,000 on something that’s actually turned our fortunes around. And that’s the key.”

Osborne: “That’s the thing that we do. The moment you start wasting it, then forget it, you’ve lost the plot, we’re just wasting our time. I got a bit of a lesson. I had a coffee with Jeff Smith [former Eurotech owner/driver] and asked how he did it, and he said, ‘The biggest mistake I ever made was just basically opening the cheque book and saying do what you need to do’. I sat these guys down, our management team, and said, ‘Look, it’s not a bottomless pit, if you’re going to do it you’re going to do it properly, but the moment I see you waste it, forget it, I’m out, I’m disengaged from the project’.”

Now that BTCC supremacy is accomplished, Osborne has further exciting plans for Alliance, which is moving this winter into new premises in Northampton. He’s an ex-GT and Carrera Cup racer himself, and has always loved sportscars: “I would love for us as a team to go to Le Mans. That’s just my dream. I’ve never been there, ever. I’ve sat and watched it on the telly lots of times, and I always promised myself that I would go there as a team owner. And that’s the ambition I’ve got. I’ve got these boys behind me to make that happen, but you’ve got to do it at the right time, with the right finances in place, and do it properly.”

Of course, there’s a long way to go to fulfil that dream, and the first is a step into GT3 competition.

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Osborne admits he has an eye on expanding operations into GT racing

“We’re in talks with manufacturers at the moment, one of them being our partner Ford [whose new Mustang is coming on stream], about running GT3 cars,” continues Osborne. “Unfortunately they can’t build one until the middle of next year, which is a bit disappointing because that means any project that we’re doing would have to be put on hold for another 12 months. But having said that we’ve got enough on our plate at the moment.”

Carrozza, for one, is keen to get his hands on a GT3 machine: “I’d like to expand on what we did with the rear-wheel-drive car [with Sutton’s title-winning Infiniti] and see what you can move to a GT3. You can run with so much more aero in that and it’s a change of philosophy, but then the change of philosophy from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive was straightforward once you understand it and you can apply physics.”

“I’m not sure how many laps I could stand with Ash driving a GT3 car!” laughs Osborne. “Stick ‘Cammo’ in it and he’d be absolutely bang on, ‘Rowbo’ the same, Ash I’d be like ‘oh no’.”

"When Ash gets to the point where he says, ‘You know what, I’m done with BTCC,’ where does he go? The natural place for me is to go to GTs and Le Mans, and really finish his career off on a high" Pete Osborne

He’s joking about Sutton, of course. In his heart, Osborne would love to take some of his BTCC boys to a new level. And this is partly why Alliance is helping out young drivers in junior series.

“We’re giving money – not massive money – to kids who’ve got some great talent and can’t quite afford the budget and need a little leg-up,” says Osborne. “Ash has earned his spurs, Cammo’s earned his spurs, Rowbo has, Sam has. They’ve all worked hard to get where they’ve got to, even from the point of view of everyone saying Sam’s me lad and his dad pays for him.

“But I work Sam like a dog – he gets very little pay! I’ve always wanted to help these youngsters come through, but I’m also thinking, ‘Where’s the next Ash, Dan coming from, where are they going to?’ So for me, when Ash gets to the point where he says, ‘You know what, I’m done with BTCC,’ where does he go? The natural place for me is to go to GTs and Le Mans, and really finish his career off on a high. Same with Dan Cammish, same with Dan Rowbottom, same with Sam to a point.

“And how do we get a youngster into BTCC? Because up and down this pitlane we’re lacking some young, new, enthusiastic people. And that’s one of our key pillars to grow with.”

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Collins explains that the team is looking to provide pathways into motorsport for the next generation across a range of positions in the team

Collins interjects: “It’s not just drivers either. It’s the young people programme that we’re working with, with Wera and Loughborough College. Yes, we have a nice pool of young drivers that we’re working with this year, but it’s also about finding the next Tony, the next James, the next Rob [Tickner, the ex-AmD man who manages operations at Alliance], the next Brent, finding the guys actually in the workshop, or in the media section, in every role in motorsport – there are so many roles to be filled and they all need a bit of a leg-up.

“We’ve got four students this weekend [at Brands] working with us, we had three at the last one, so that young person programme is not just aimed at drivers anymore – it’s aimed at every role within the team and hopefully we can shape a few youngsters into the next Tony or whoever.”

There’s a kind of philanthropy here then, but on the basis that it makes commercial sense. Osborne made no bones when he bought the team from founder David Bartrum (initially with AmD boss Shaun Hollamby, who soon departed the squad but left his staff on board) that one driving force was the family’s sheer enthusiasm for the sport – as well as older son Sam, younger boy Jamie competes in the Mini Challenge. But, longer term, it can’t just leak money.

“I put quite a lot of my own cash into the business, but I would have been doing some of that anyway because obviously I have Sam and James,” he reasons. “I will carry on investing in the business, but this year it’s got better, and next year it’s certainly got better because we’ve just sat down with NAPA and reviewed our budgets. We’re open-book with our partners so they can see what we’re spending and everything, and how we spend their well-earned money on us as a team.

“Without that investment you can’t grow any business. You have to invest in people, equipment; everything that’s taken us to where we are today we’ve had to invest in. The difference between how I run it and how David ran it is I don’t run it as a profit centre; it’s a cost centre to me. If it draws even, I’ve done a great job. If it doesn’t, then unfortunately I pay for that privilege. But that’s how I wanted to run the business and that’s how I am running the business.”

And the reward comes from far more than the numbers on the balance sheet; it’s in helping people establish themselves. Yule, for example, left the team in the middle of the summer for a new job in Australia’s Supercars series. When the BTCC convened at Brands for its season finale, he was at the Bathurst 1000.

“One of my mechanics from my Radical days is now one of the top guys at the FIA in Formula 1,” grins Osborne. “And I got a little message from Brent this week saying, ‘Hi gaffer, hope everything goes really well, hope Ash wins it’. And I sent him back saying, ‘Yeah love you too mate, wish I were at Bathurst!’ And I got a little heart back.

“He was actually in tears when he was telling me he’d got this opportunity to go to Australia. That’s the nice part of this job. The winning’s great, it’s what we do it for, but you know when you see some of these guys and they’ve progressed and they’re going on… you pinch yourself. We’ve got two or three lovely kids who are the next Brents coming through, and that to me is as rewarding. I’m very proud of that.”

And that, folks, is what you’d define as an alliance. It’s not just a base for some motors anymore.

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Alliance team is building for the future as well as enjoying its present success