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How the BTCC produced one of motorsport's best finales

Championship finales are often overhyped and fall flat in reality. But it's unlikely anyone attending the British Touring Car Championship decider at Brands Hatch last weekend could have been prepared for the extraordinary events

Matt Kew Oct 14, 2019, 2:04 PM

Take your pick: a rollercoaster of emotions, it can't be scripted, the stars aligned, it had to be seen to be believed, it isn't over until it's over. Regardless of whichever cliche you assign to the 2019 British Touring Car Championship season finale on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix layout, nothing comes close to encapsulating the drama that unfolded for Colin Turkington to win the title.

This was a driver who had lost his lead in the standings to Dan Cammish ahead of the final race. He was eight points shy of the Team Dynamics pilot and was staring at 24 cars in front of him on the grid after being hit by Matt Neal into a spin on the opening lap of race two. Even the WSR driver himself said that he was "out of the championship" ahead of the final contest.

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Author Matt Kew

Matt Kew is Autosport’s F1 Editor, a role he has held since March 2022 following stints covering Formula E, Extreme E and the British Touring Car Championship.

Matt joined Autosport in 2018 to work predominantly on the magazine, but his relentless quoting of Alan Partridge meant office colleagues soon thought he would be better-suited to increased field work.

Needless to say, Matt had the last laugh when he won the Motorsport UK Young Journalist of the Year Award in 2019.

His interest in motorsport was sparked by regular trips to watch ASCAR crash around Rockingham’s banked oval.

Matt read politics and philosophy at the University of Sheffield - receiving first-class honours for his dissertation assessing the lack of female participation in top-tier motor racing.

He covered a wide variety of national race and rally meetings for Autosport as a freelancer before joining full-time. His best efforts to argue the merits of historic racing are undone by a questionable taste in music and James Bond actors.