How an impromptu throwback demonstrated BTCC's sky-high level at a wet Thruxton

With only three support series on the timetable, ITV 4 had a lunchtime slot to fill during its Sunday broadcast of the British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton. And it did so with a May 1989 round of the series from the Hampshire speedbowl, introduced by the soon-to-retire Steve Rider and with commentary from the late Murray Walker.

What was interesting was that it showed how much better the series is now. Back then, 36 years ago, a large proportion of the field comprised ageing amateurs, some of whom had little idea what they were doing. There were some quick guys at the front though, which was dominated by Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500s. The recently departed Dave Brodie sat on pole with a 1m19.46s with a Sierra that was subsequently found to be using illegal fuel, so the quickest genuine qualifying lap from an RS500 was Andy Rouse’s 1m20.24s.

One day before this rose-tinted-spectacles repeat, Ash Sutton had gone around the same 2.356 miles of asphalt at the wheel of his Alliance Racing Ford Focus ST to set pole position in 1m20.786s. And that was in torrentially wet conditions. So he was just half a second slower than his fellow four-time champion Rouse had managed in bright sunshine with a car pushing out around a zillion horsepower.

The qualifying record for the current NGTC formula of BTCC machinery around Thruxton is Dan Cammish’s 1m15.201s, set in his Honda Civic Type R back in 2020, and it’s a course of constant amazement that cars can lap so close to dry-weather times here. And this time, there was plenty of aquaplaning going on too.

Part of the reason for this is that, due to the high-speed curves and abrasive asphalt that make up most of the circuit, the Goodyear hard-compound tyre is mandated in the dry, while the wet-weather rubber has a very soft compound – as well it might in a country where rain usually means it’s pretty damn cold.

“I think if you put a soft tyre on in the dry, not that it would last because of how abrasive the track is, you’d see lap times probably a couple of seconds quicker,” pointed out Sutton. “The fact that the wet tyre is so soft, it does mean that the margin’s closer, and because it’s so abrasive we get a lot more grip than we actually expect. Normally the traditional feeling is, ‘Oh, it’ll be 10 seconds slower,’ but there’s a handful of tracks – Croft, here – where it’s quite close, a lot closer than how you think. I put that solely down to how abrasive the Tarmac is and how soft the wet tyre is.

A soft wet tyre combined with Thruxton's layout and track surface ensured drivers could still push on

Photo by: JEP

“I actually like it. You can very easily cook it and destroy it if you don’t look after it, and you can very much destroy the driven axle if that makes sense, but as long as you’ve got a good balance in the car you can protect it.”

Sutton’s team-mate Dan Cammish, third on the grid, added: “I’m shocked by the amount of grip at Noble – it’s incredible. For what is a sodden track, the fact that you turn in almost flat in fifth, lift and go back to the throttle… On a couple of laps I actually got halfway through and thought, ‘God this has got some grip. This should be absolutely treacherous but I’ve actually got proper grip.’ It’s almost what a slick would feel like on some circuits [in the dry].”

And Tom Ingram, who joined Sutton on the front row in his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N, was also taken aback by the wet-weather pace: “The tyres are crazy soft. Initially when people said, ‘What will be the lap time?’ I said, ‘1m25s?’ I was thinking we’re going to be at least 10 seconds, maybe more off. To be there is pretty bonkers really. What it would be like over a race distance I don’t know, but certainly from a qualifying perspective they feel pretty good.”

"It’s [Goodyear's wet tyres] got that nice bite to it and that’s what our BMW loves, and I love. You know how many races I’ve won in the rain now. I wanted it to rain – just not that much" Jake Hill

But it’s not like that all the way around the circuit. Some new asphalt at Allard, the first corner, produced a massive Sutton four-wheel drift early in the qualifying segments, reminiscent of Ronnie Peterson in the snow at Silverstone in 1973 with his Lotus 72. Sutton, who made an impressive GT3 debut the previous weekend in the GT World Challenge Europe at Monza, chuckled: “I scared myself with that one – I’m not going to lie. We did our lap time just before that and I went to go again and… maybe bit off more than the car can chew. We just lost the rear and luckily kept it out of the green stuff and out of the wall. Even though I’ve been driving rear-wheel-drive cars, I remembered to keep my foot in!”

And Ingram reckoned his enormous wobble out of the chicane on his hot lap cost him pole. As the Hyundai approach the start-finish line, it was squirming onto and then off the grass as the 2022 champion wrestled for control.

“That was pole…” he reckoned. “It was so tricky out there, there was so much standing water, there were so many bits to catch you out, that I came through the last corner, got hooked up on the inside of one puddle, which aquaplaned me straight to another puddle on the outside. The trouble is I had to keep momentum, because if I jump on the brake I’m going to be straight in the wall, if I lift I’m going to be in the wall, so I’ve got to stay on the power and try to kind of stay on. That was the pole lap gone. It was borderline dangerous with the standing water out there.”

The BMWs faced their own challenge as the rear-wheel drive runners

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And that also hampered the rear-wheel-drive BMW 330i M Sports. Jake Hill outpaced West Surrey Racing team-mate Charles Rainford to be the best of them in Q2, but even that was good enough only for eighth. “When you’re at aquaplane level, similar to what we were at Silverstone last year in race three, it just becomes really difficult for us,” he explained. “We can’t lay any power, we can’t have any forward drive, whereas the front-wheel-drive boys just keep the foot in and drive through the puddles. It’s a lot easier for them, plus they’ve got so much more weight over the turning wheels.”

But Hill is another who enjoys the Goodyear wet in milder conditions, as you’d expect since the soft compound plays to the advantages of the BMW: “It’s probably what gives us a bit more of an edge because it’s got that nice bite to it and that’s what our BMW loves, and I love. You know how many races I’ve won in the rain now. I wanted it to rain – just not that much!”

Leaving aside the BMW drivers, who are battling with a completely different concept to the remaining 21 competitors in the field, it’s increasingly apparent that Sutton and Ingram are not just a step above the others, but on a par with top international professionals. Their regular ability to qualify at the front with minimal TOCA Turbo Boost is astonishing, and Sutton was apparently highly impressive across his induction to GT3 in the BMW M4, right
from his early tests. He admits that the whole experience has “whet the appetite, shall we say, for now”, but “am I done with British touring cars? No."

Many would argue that Ingram is his equal, and voices within the Excelr8 team rate him above Sutton. Will we ever truly find out? Probably not. But a champion from the Super Touring era told me last year that he reckons Sutton to be at least as good as any of the 1990s heroes, ergo Ingram is too. What a shame they weren’t born a generation ago…

Even Cammish, ever the one for analysis, reckons: “There’s two standouts at the moment in Ash and Tom, and I think on my day I’m third, and I need to find a way of getting myself into their little bubble they’ve got at the front.”

With that in mind, it’s pleasing to see talent continuing to come through what is a highly competitive field – with the first-time victories this season for Daryl DeLeon, Rainford and Mikey Doble, plus Senna Proctor’s return, we now have 19 BTCC race winners on the grid.

Once again, Sutton and Ingram showed they are the class of the field

Photo by: JEP

Hot on the heels of his Snetterton success, Doble continued to impress in the antique-but-able Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra. Across Q1 and Q2 in those awful conditions, he was the only driver within a second of Sutton and Ingram; he was inside the same margin in Q3, when he was beaten by Cammish, who always seems to take a step forward in this phase. “For me, it was really important to follow up my win at Snetterton with a decent showing,” he smiled. “I didn’t want to crash back down to earth or for it to be a fluke. It’s the first wet qualifying session of the year, so it shows our car can be versatile in all conditions.”

Pleasure on Saturday, but disaster on Sunday. Doble was firmly in the four-car battle for the lead of race one with Sutton, Ingram and Cammish before the water pressure spiked and caused the engine to overheat. With team-mate Nick Halstead withdrawing from the weekend after FP1, due to a rib injury sustained in a McLaren Trophy Europe shunt at Monza, the sister Astra’s engine was cannibalised for race two, and Doble was rising through the field when the oil pipe came adrift. He raced from the back of the grid to eighth in the finale, only for a track-limits penalty to convert that to 13th. Doh!

Often, it’s your performances rather than your results that create the impression. Sutton and Ingram had to go through that in their early days, and watching a driver hanging it out around the fast sweepers of Thruxton in the wet is as good an indication of talent as any (and credit here too to another youngster, James Dorlin, consistently impressing in the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota team and who made Q3 at Thruxton, for the first time).

Even Tim Harvey, a close second to Rouse that day at Thruxton back in 1989, and now ITV 4’s pundit, would have to admit that the level now is far higher. But those nifty Goodyear wets would have been destroyed by the Sierras!

Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500 on current Goodyear BTCC tyres - now there's a thought!

Photo by: JEP