How a four-time British Touring Car champion is adapting to life off the grid

A trim figure is standing in the Brands Hatch pitlane, watching the West Surrey Racing crew getting assembled for end-of-day photos – and is that a wistful look in his eyes?

The team is in celebratory mode, as well it might be: three British Touring Car Championship race wins with a trio of drivers; a pair of 1-2s.

“Get in the picture, Colin,” exhort a couple of well-meaning WSR folk. “No, no,” he replies with a modest chuckle. “I’ve been in far too many photos.”

Colin Turkington this year finds himself in a new role: coaching Aiden Moffat as the Scot gets to grips with the BMW 330i M Sport alongside reigning champion Jake Hill, rookie sensation Charles Rainford and star up-and-comer Daryl DeLeon.

As a four-time champion of the BTCC, he as well as everybody else knows he should be on the grid himself, but such is the current commercial climate…

Quite rightly for one of his pedigree, Turkington had been a salaried member of WSR, but it’s well-documented that BMW had been forced to slash its motorsport budgets, and attempts by the team to alleviate this had fallen through.

Until next year? That’s the hope. But the 43-year-old Northern Irishman is either a) not holding his breath, or b) doing a terrific job of playing down anything that may be going on behind the commercial scenery.

“Honestly, I’m not in any better or different position than I was at the end of last year,” sighs Turkington. “At the moment it’s status quo. I basically just have to be patient and see where things are come the end of the season again.

Turkington’s new role includes track walk with Moffat and WSR engineer John Waterman

Photo by: JEP

“Everybody’s mind is now shifted towards the current season and it’s head down, blinkers on for everybody involved in the championship. I have accepted the position I’m in for this year and, like I’ve said before, I’m enjoying driving different cars in different championships, and just keeping myself sharp and ready for whatever that next opportunity is. 

“I don’t feel like I’m any closer to being back in BTCC again next year. I’m just trying to keep my options open because I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, and that’s why I’m trying to do a bit more GT stuff this year and just see if there’s a potential opening there.

“As much as I would love to be back in BTCC again one day, I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen, so I don’t want to put all the chips in that direction.”

Above all, Turkington is renowned as not only a great touring car driver, but also a general motorsport enthusiast. He’s raced this season in the GT Cup in a Ginetta G56, been a class winner in a hotted-up Mazda MX-5, ditto in the Amspeed BMW M3 E36 he has shared in Britcar and Classic Sports Car Club outings with Mark Smith.

“I’ve enjoyed trying to pass my experience on in how to drive the BMW and get the most of it, just approaching weekends and how to prepare effectively for them” Colin Turkington

“I do really enjoy that car,” he enthuses of the M3. “It’s as close to a BTCC car as you’ll ever get in terms of performance, feel, it runs on the same tyre. It’s pretty much bang on – it does the same lap times around most circuits. It’s a bit lighter than a BTCC car, but it feels so similar it’s unbelievable.”

The Touring Car Legendary Old Boys’ network has also secured Turkington a drive in a Ford Mustang at the Brands Hatch Masters Historic meeting because the beast’s regular co-pilot Rob Huff “double booked up again. We’re job-sharing!” And he reckons he’ll be racing at the same venue on the Super Touring Power weekend.

Around that is the coaching work. It’s something Turkington has never blown his own trumpet about but, when he called us shortly before the announcement of his stepping down from the BTCC for 2025, he did so from Croft where he was helping out Ginetta Junior kids. Now he’s transferred that to a slightly older and more experienced customer in the form of Moffat.

“I’ve enjoyed trying to pass my experience on in how to drive the BMW and get the most of it, just approaching weekends and how to prepare effectively for them,” he explains. “I’ve enjoyed being involved with another driver and still with West Surrey. It’s what I know best – BTCC and how to maximise the BMW package. I didn’t do anything with him really pre-season, so I don’t think we’ve quite seen the fruits of our labour yet, but I have no doubt we will and that Aiden will win a race or two.

Turkington jumped aboard Hill’s car for Brands Hatch test

Photo by: JEP

“It’s been strange for me being there and being involved, because when I’m watching the sessions, particularly free practice, I can almost see myself out on the track. I’m almost waiting for myself to come past, and that’s a bizarre feeling just because I’ve done it for 20 years.

“Even just as the sessions are about to start, I still get the butterflies, and I still get that little bit of anxiety because… I don’t quite know if anybody appreciates as much as me what the drivers are going through.

“As a spectator or somebody on the outside you just see a car going around a circuit, and if you’re supporting a driver either it goes well or it doesn’t go well, but you don’t quite really understand what the drivers are going through in terms of the anxieties, the pressure, the physical effort, the mental effort in the car, and just the ups and downs. 

“People talk about the BTCC roller coaster, and as a driver you go through so much emotional torment and it’s impossible to quantify that unless you are the driver. Even though I’m there very much on the periphery now, I know exactly where the drivers’ heads are.

“I think maybe that’s where I can help, because as much as you always want the car to be the best it can be, a lot of times you’re trying to manage a bad situation because the car’s not where you want it or you’re having a hard time or you’ve just had a tough race, and I know exactly how all that feels and, I suppose, how to work forward from there.”

That race weekend at Brands in early May was, of course, a complete turnaround for WSR from the late April opener at Donington Park, where the team struggled. Turkington got first-hand experience of the difficulties – caused primarily by weight distribution since the removal of hybrid – in a March test at Brands.

Hill was otherwise engaged racing a GT3 Ferrari at Mugello, and WSR called up its old star to climb back aboard the very same car he raced in 2022-24 (Hill’s title-winning BMW is now in the hands of Rainford).

Donington 2024: the last win for Turkington, or just the most recent?

Photo by: JEP

“Certainly when I tested the car at the beginning of the season, I had a similar feeling,” he reflects. “At the end of that day the car felt really good. It felt on its toes, the front axle felt really alive, which I loved because that’s how I like to drive.

“But again, the area to work on was the rear axle. It was a little bit not gripped up enough, and I guess that has been an ongoing theme. I think it’s moving in the right direction, but everybody in the team is aware that there’s going to have to be another step forward required to be on a par with the likes of Excelr8 and NAPA. The job’s not done.”

Has Turkington’s brain been picked on what’s required? “I’m in the debriefs,” he replies, “and I’m useful because I’m the only one who’s driven the car pre-hybrid, so I know what the car felt like then. But motorsport is all about the here and now – it’s ‘what does the car feel like today and what can we do to make it better?’.

“I can watch onboards, I can see how the car’s reacting and have a good idea in my head of what it might need, but I feel like I can only give or help so much from the outside because I’m not driving it, I’m not feeling exactly what’s going on. My help has a ceiling, I feel.”

“Feeling the buzz of the championship and the atmosphere, not being in the pressure cooker of being a driver, it’s brilliant, it really is!” Colin Turkington

When he’s outside the garage or the debriefs, well… Turkington is loving the BTCC. Remember, when he left the series before, after winning the 2009 title, that was to pursue World and Scandinavian touring car programmes. Since his debut in 2002, he’s not been present in the series while not racing.

“One of the things I felt at the end of last year, if I’m not going to be racing in the BTCC I’m just going to go back to being a fan of the series,” he smiles. “The race days, from my perspective, have been mega you know.

“Feeling the buzz of the championship and the atmosphere, and having the blinkers off, not being in the pressure cooker of being a driver, it’s brilliant, it really is!

“I arrived into Donington – I was staying at home [just down the M1 in Milton Keynes] that weekend – about 10 o’clock, once all the rush was over to get in, a good hour and a half before the first race, and just parking in the lower fields, I couldn’t believe how many cars were in the car park.

First BTCC title with WSR, fighting Plato at Brands Hatch in 2009

Photo by: JEP

“People were arriving into the circuit absolutely buzzing, and couldn’t wait for the races to start, and you can really feel that excitement.

“And Brands Hatch was an even better race day. Having the big delta between the hard and soft compound on a race weekend is really working from an entertainment point of view. It’s a great series to be involved with and spectate – I don’t think there’s anything quite like it.”

Yes, but… The rest of us onlookers are mediocre (at best) racing drivers. And there’s a race on to become the BTCC’s first five-time champion. Surely there must come a time when spectating is not enough for Turkington.

“Just having that slight involvement with the team, your body’s still going through the motions and you’re still going through those processes of what it’s like to be out there,” he weighs up.

“Of course I’ve still got that itch to want to drive, but I think as well I still… the feelings that I had at the end of last season and the start of this season, it felt like the right time for me to take a back seat.”

And if he moves back into the front seat? There are some future pitlane celebratory photos to be taken, with Turkington bang centre in the foreground.

This article is one of many in the new monthly issue of Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the July 2025 issue and subscribe today.

Having fun in the Amspeed BMW at Donington Park – “I do really enjoy that car”

Photo by: JEP