How the BTCC's new champion and his car were honed into 2024 title winners

To win the British Touring Car Championship, you don’t have to drive at ten-tenths all the time. For Jake Hill in 2024, it was all about driving at eight-fifths. Confused? Well, let’s explain…

Hill had a reputation as a naturally gifted driver who could sometimes overreach in his bid to attain the unattainable, who was always on the limit. This season he banished that to the extent where, remarkably, he finished in fifth position in eight of the 30 races. When that result offers you 11 points to the 20 of the race winner, those points soon stack up: eight-fifths equal more than four wins.

“I just needed to try and cut out a couple of little mistakes,” Hill admits as he basks in the afterglow of his first-ever title in car racing. “Cast my mind back to 2023, and Croft was a prime example – I like to think that I’ve got pretty good car control, but I spun in two races that weekend and cost myself a load of points, just trying too hard when the car’s not underneath you. That was a very valuable lesson in the sense that ‘if the car’s not there mate, don’t chase it, you’ve just got to take what you can’.

“The ironic thing that I did learn a big lesson from was in that race two where I did spin, where I was trying to chase [Dan] Rowbottom, if I’d stayed where I was I would have got reversed-grid pole and won like Colin [Turkington, team-mate] did. Let’s try and iron out those little bits – take what you can because ultimately that’s going to be worth more than binning it.”

The new approach added up to Hill’s Laser Tools-liveried West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport claiming 29 finishes, 28 of them in the points, 26 in the top six. The only DNF came at Brands Hatch in May, when steering failure as a result of repeated contact from others speared him off the road at the Druids hairpin.

But, of course, while the old saying that ‘the most important nut is the one behind the steering wheel’ holds true, the car has to be pretty good too. WSR went to work over the winter refining the 3 Series, while a new evolution of the old faithful B48 BMW powerplant was developed by long-time engine partner Neil Brown Engineering.

Hill benefitted from a new engine prepared by Neil Brown Engineering in his WSR BMW

Photo by: JEP

“We all felt that the front grip we were getting just wasn’t enough from the 2023 car,” continues Hill, “and also the engine… They’d used that same block for the last five years, and it was just getting a bit long in the tooth.

“We managed to go to the newer two-litre BMW engine that was available, and that just gave a more stable platform throughout. It was definitely not a Hyundai beater in a straight line, but it was a lot better. Those were the two massive areas where we improved the car, and also the weight distribution. Dickie [Dick Bennetts, WSR boss] managed to really pull some strings with getting it better, and all those things pointed in the right direction.”

Hill’s long-time engineer Craig Porley, with whom he has worked since 2020, admits that development-wise “we were left with no choice with the fantastic job that Alliance did last year. They moved the game forward, and anyone wanting to compete with that had to do the same.”

"There were signs that it was going to be a fast race car, but it was a step back to go forwards. Pre-season testing was probably the hardest we’ve been through"
Craig Porley

In 2023, of course, Alliance’s NAPA-liveried Ford Focus STs showed crushing domination, enabling Ash Sutton a relatively easy run to the title. For 2024, over at Tom Ingram-led Excelr8 Motorsport, there was a big leap forward with development of the Hyundai i30 N Fastback. There was too on the BMW at WSR, although it took longer to become evident.

Here, also, it’s worth pointing out that, while Ingram’s engineer Spencer Aldridge very much leads development on the Hyundai, and ditto Sutton’s man Antonio Carrozza on the Ford, at WSR the technical chief on the BMW has long been John Waterman, who looked after Turkington from 2020-23. This puts the achievements of Hill and Porley in perspective, in the sense that their title was won with a car that wasn’t necessarily developed around that driver.

“West Surrey and John Waterman did a fantastic job with the car upgrades over the winter,” acknowledges Porley. “I did a bit with them, but predominantly it was John and Steve Buckle [chief mechanic] and Dick on that side, and NBE did a fantastic job with the engine.

“We were hoping to take steps forward, but what we weren’t expecting was the first lap out in pre-season testing – it was evident that we had a very different race car with all of the changes. There were signs that it was going to be a fast race car, but it was a step back to go forwards. Pre-season testing was probably the hardest we’ve been through in really working hard to find a new operating window for the car.

Porley says upgrades took plenty of work to understand during the winter

Photo by: JEP

“We got it into a sensible place for the start of the season, but Brands [in May] was an example where it just didn’t work for us. We went back to the drawing board a little bit, and the rest was history from Snet on. That’s when our season really took off. We wouldn’t be where we are now without the changes on the car, that’s for sure.”

“After Brands, I was feeling pretty low,” reflects Hill. “We were slow. Colin and Adam [Morgan, in the third of the WSR BMWs] managed to make it work. It’s the first time I can honestly say we were a bit lost with it. Me and Craig dug ourselves into a bit of a hole. We don’t really know what went wrong. Then the steering failed in race two.

“We came back super-strong. I think the mentality side of it, that’s where it’s really shown, that you can bounce back. It was so early in the season that we just needed to have a blinder. Those damp, wet conditions went on to become my favourite this year. And at Snetterton, the car really was just so wonderful to drive.”

Snetterton, indeed, is where Hill crushed his opposition in qualifying, and sped to victory in each of the first two races. It was a resounding turnaround from a pretty dismal performance at Brands, and showed mental strength. Part of the reason for this, reckons Hill, is down to his fiancee giving birth to their son in November last year.

“Completely, yeah,” he agrees. “You don’t necessarily realise you’ve changed at the time, but after a couple of rounds, I noticed that I was thinking about things differently. It’s the mentality side that changes – Craig noticed it, so did Mark [Blundell, Hill’s manager] pretty early on, and obviously it was a positive.

“I think I’ve just chilled out even more. Those angry spikes I’d get in the car if I was being beaten up a little bit, and then you would end up making a mistake or firing someone off, they just don’t rev me up anymore. Nice and calm all the time. Of course, things still annoy you every now and then, it’s just how you react to them.”

So much of sport is down to psychology, and this could arguably be applied to the effect of a change in weight distribution of the BMW. Since the introduction of the hybrid system for 2022, WSR had been bemoaning that the restrictions on where the kit could be located were more detrimental to the rear-wheel-drive 3 Series than its front-driven opposition.

Over the winter of 2023-24, BTCC organiser TOCA didn’t so much as give concessions to WSR; instead it relaxed the regulations for the whole field on hybrid placement. Now, in the BMW, the hybrid could be moved further towards the rear and lower.

Hill demonstrated title-winning credentials with double win at Snetterton

Photo by: JEP

“Everyone had to carry the weight of the hybrid, but it was where that weight was going, and that really hurt us,” explains Porley. “From pre-hybrid, through the various small regulation changes like where we were allowed to put ballast in the car, it was just constantly working against us and we had a 2% shift in weight distribution from pre-hybrid.

“TOCA listened as they do when we showed them the numbers, showed them the facts, and that allowed us to make the shift – we’re still not back to where we were pre-hybrid, but we’re closer to it, and that’s had a huge effect on the car. I think that’s where it had such an effect on us having to rework the set-up, but unfortunately going back to pre-hybrid set-up didn’t work either, so we had to find a new path and fortunately, we got there.”

The final piece of the jigsaw was wet-weather set-up – and let’s face it, if you’re going to compete in the BTCC, this is quite important… The rear-wheel-drive BMW isn’t supposed to be at its best in slippery or greasy conditions, but Hill reckons that he and Porley had “actually found this sort of magic set-up and way of going about it at Silverstone in 2023, when we won the first race and we were leading the second by a country mile until the boost sensor failure.

"If it’s a greasy circuit and we’re all out on wets, I’d say the balance shifts towards the rear-wheel-drives if we look after our tyres, whereas if it’s sensibly wet then it’s a reasonably even fight" Craig Porley

“It was coming, and as we developed the car a little bit more over the winter it made it even easier in the wet, in the way that the engine was so much more driveable in those sort of wet conditions. When it was torrential like it was in race three at Silverstone [2024], the BMW still suffers quite badly. But when it’s that normal wet or greasy conditions, my God we’re fast.”

“The engine has been a massive part of it,” adds Porley. “We hope we can find a little bit more over the off-season, because Swindon do a fantastic job on the Hyundai engine and everyone else has to play catch-up, and that’s what motorsport’s all about. We’ve got a target on our back now, but equally we’re not resting on our laurels. We’ve got gains we need to make to take it to Excelr8 and Alliance.

“Some of it was the engine and some of it was we found a few little tricks that worked for us in the wet. It’s an interesting battle in the wet. If it’s a greasy circuit and we’re all out on slicks, then we get murdered by the front-wheel-drives. If it’s a greasy circuit and we’re all out on wets, I’d say the balance shifts towards the rear-wheel-drives if we look after our tyres, whereas if it’s sensibly wet then it’s a reasonably even fight, but, as we saw at Silverstone, in monsoon it goes to front-wheel-drives. So it’s a really funny dance that you do – how wet and what tyres you’re on in those conditions.”

This is why, at showdown time at Brands Hatch on 6 October, confidence was swelling within the Hill garage. The steady drizzle since mid-afternoon had turned things around. Yes, Hill had taken victory in race one, but only after a first-lap shemozzle at Druids had eliminated Sutton and Josh Cook and delayed Ingram, and then Turkington had moved over for his title-chasing team-mate.

Wet conditions suited Hill, who triumphed at a murky Silverstone

Photo by: JEP

In the second race, Ingram was blisteringly quick, passed both BMWs and took victory so that he entered the finale just one point adrift of Hill. The Hyundai was clearly a quicker car, and Ingram is always superb at Brands. Now, though, the track was wet, but not massively so.

PLUS: How the BTCC showdown culminated in a new king of the Hill

“The biggest thing was if anyone was going to be brave enough to go onto slicks,” recounts Porley. “Everyone keeps an eye on each other in those circumstances. But from our point of view we were confident that we had to stay with the wets. The reason why we thought we could have the advantage above Tom was based on Silverstone race two, where in very similar conditions we had the legs on him.

“The thing in those conditions is that the new wets that were introduced a few years ago, they’re very much like working with a slick, whereas the old wets were quite forgiving, they lasted a long time and there was quite a big operating window with the pressures. These new wets are very peaky and the pressures prove to be critical.

“One of the things Jake said to me on the grid before race three at Brands was just, ‘Please, please get the pressures right’. There’s nothing like putting the pressure on me! Had I got it wrong, there’s every chance we would have gone backwards in that race. I’ve never felt that kind of pressure to get it right, flicking back through my notes to see what adjustments we’d made in similar conditions.

“Tom is an immensely talented driver but Jake played it sensibly. By lap two there was [Dan] Cammish and Ingram ahead, and I could just see from the car positioning from Jake and the throttle pick-up and everything on the TV footage, the nerves finally settled and I thought, ‘Yeah, we’ve got this’. And he just started picking people off from there on. We settled into a rhythm.

“It got a bit dicey with Cook and I was straight on the radio saying, ‘Mate, we don’t need the position, let him have it unless I tell you otherwise’, and fortunately the next lap Cook made a mistake and Jake was through without any dramas. The first thing I said was, ‘Don’t go after Ash [Sutton, who won the race] – we don’t need it, just hold fire’. He listened, and the rest is history as they say.”

“I was pretty calm,” reckons Hill. “I genuinely was. The way me and Craig go about it is you have to be patient. Initially we knew we might suffer a bit, but if you just give it two or three laps, everything will come right. And also I’d heard that Tom had to put another new set of fronts on after the two laps to the grid. I thought, ‘Well if you’re having to do that mate, you’re screwed’, in the nicest way possible.

“I was so happy with the conditions that had come – they’re just me through and through. Tom shot off, and then the BMW came alive, and his car started falling off quite a bit. And also no one was exploring the proper wet lines in places, and we did him round the outside of Surtees where there’s just so much more grip. I was a bit surprised that a few of them weren’t doing it, because it’s an awful lot quicker.”

Hill was elated when conditions deteriorated for the Brands Hatch finale

Photo by: JEP

For all the success of his patient, measured approach, Hill still claimed the title with the most race wins of anyone – eight versus six for Ingram, five for Turkington and three for Sutton. It’s a balancing act of risk versus reward. For example, had he not divebombed poor old Mikey Doble for a race-winning move on the last lap at Oulton Park in June, his path to the title would have been just that little bit harder.

“You have to do it while it’s there for the taking,” Hill points out. “We’re here to do a job, we’re not here to make friends. I felt sorry for Mikey, but sometimes you have to be a bit of an arsehole when it comes to these things.

“That’s another side of the mentality that’s changed this year – there’s no holds barred, if it’s on I’m doing it, simple as that. And ultimately it got me those couple of extra wins or points here and there. I probably didn’t need to do a couple of those moves, but when it comes down to it, we always know how tight this championship is, and as we found out a couple of points can really be the difference.”

"This year there’s been so many times where he’s just settled without getting into a fight that he doesn’t need to get into, and picked up points for fourth or fifth" Craig Porley

“He’s just shown that maturity this year that we’ve been trying to drill into him,” smiles Porley. “It has been like working with a different driver. What’s won him the championship has been his race three performances. Before, we’ve often done well in race one and two, and it’s then gone to pot a little bit, not always our own fault.

“This year there’s been so many times where he’s just settled without getting into a fight that he doesn’t need to get into, and picked up points for fourth or fifth. Equally you’ve got the flipside of races like Oulton, where he just bided his time, let the two Vauxhalls use their hybrid, and sat there waiting, kept his tyres good and then got it on the last lap in a great way.

“The work we’ve done with Jake has been five years in the making [since the driver and engineer first linked up in their AmD Honda days in 2020], and that’s what made it as emotional as it was and a prouder achievement. It’s been a long old slog to get there and we’ve managed to do it.”

Hill showed a mastery of knowing when to bank points and when to go for wins, such as with his pass on Doble at Oulton Park

Photo by: JEP