How the BTCC's new hybrid era aced its first test

The build-up to opening night wasn’t without its niggles (when is that ever not the case in motorsport?), but the first race weekend using hybrid power in the British Touring Car Championship was a resounding success.

Whether by luck or design, series organiser TOCA revealed a 2022 schedule that kicked off at Donington Park, the East Midlands venue that has usually provided some of the best racing of the season during the current era of NGTC cars. So yes, we had great racing, but it was no more or less great than we have come to expect here. We had some places gained by use of the hybrid power boost, but it wasn’t akin to the DRS drive-by cruising to which we’ve become accustomed in Formula 1. And the cars are faster. Even with a 70kg increase in base weights to account for the Cosworth-built hybrid and its battery, Jake Hill smashed Gordon Shedden’s 2021 qualifying record by 0.576 seconds, and Hill’s new race lap record was 0.272s under Ash Sutton’s old mark from 2020.

“I thought it was really good, genuinely,” says 1992 BTCC champion and latter-day ITV pundit Tim Harvey. “I had my doubts, I had my worries – whether about reliability, effectiveness or the quality of the racing. I had all kinds of concerns because we were coming into a brave new world. But the reality was that the cars were faster overall, and we’re only two race weekends away from when they raced at Donington before [as the penultimate round of 2021].”

The hybrid, which can only be activated when the car tops 120km/h, provides an increase of approximately 10% power for a maximum 15 seconds per lap. “It seemed like they worked out quickly where to use the hybrid for an optimum lap for qualifying,” continues Harvey, “but then it all changed in the racing in terms of specifically targeting it to overtake or put pressure on people. It definitely worked, and it made the racing more interesting.”

The drivers and teams did indeed seem to come to a consensus on where the hybrid should be deployed in qualifying. The interesting thing at Donington, and this is something that will likely be even more the case for the upcoming round at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit, was that the final seconds of hybrid usage per lap were to carry maximum possible speed across the start-finish straight for the beginning of the next lap.

“You use it at the start-finish line and carry some of that performance onto the next lap,” explains Hill’s West Surrey Racing BMW stablemate Stephen Jelley. “Most use it to the line, where it deactivates. You then use a little bit out of Redgate, a large chunk out of the Old Hairpin uphill, a little bit out of McLeans, and a big chunk down the back straight.”

As Harvey explained, that changed in the races, and it provided an interesting extra dimension. “It was very successful,” enthuses TOCA supremo Alan Gow. “Obviously we went into the weekend with a lot of unknowns, because we didn’t know how the hybrids would race against each other. You can do all the testing you like, but when you get to a race meeting things are very different. So I think it worked out really well. The best sounding boards for all that are the drivers, because they’re the ones who have to operate it and they’re the ones who experience how it works in battle if you like, and I didn’t hear one negative comment all weekend. And that’s bloody unusual!”

One of the pleasant byproducts of the introduction of hybrid power is the disappearance of the old system of success ballast. This was upped to a 75kg maximum for 2021, but now it’s gone, replaced by restrictions on the number of seconds per lap

That we got to Donington in the first place with 28 hybrid-boosted machines was, as hinted in our opening gambit, a good result. Cosworth had the hybrid kits all ready and waiting for the teams in January, but there was a bit of negotiating going on between those entities regarding the terms of the leasing contract (something to which TOCA is not a party). Suffice to say that it was March before any team had a hybrid-equipped BTCC car up and running on the track. And it was well into April before they all did…

“Some of the teams were late in preparing their cars,” alludes Gow. “Some went into that weekend with very little testing, little more than shakedowns, but even they had a relatively trouble-free weekend. You always get niggles, but it was really good. I was really pleased, everyone was very positive after the weekend, and the to-do list… you always look at a to-do list after a weekend, and it was very small.”

Alan Gow said there were zero complaints from BTCC drivers about the hybrid system debut

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

One thing that has transpired from the to-do list is an immediate reduction in the cars’ base weights from Donington by 15kg. Harvey points out that this will “relieve extra pressure on tyres” (during the racing at Donington, Jason Plato suffered a left-front puncture, while Dan Cammish had a delamination at the same corner), and that this will play more into the hands of teams running front-wheel-drive cars, since rear-driven machines have more flexibility in placing the lead ballast necessary to bring them up to the base weight.

“We always said to the teams that we were going to reduce the base weight as much as we can, given you have to use the heaviest car and driver combination,” expands Gow. “It’s not just for tyres, it’s to make the cars a bit more snappy and everything else. If we can take weight off cars without costing teams money and everything else, then you do it. Eighty-five kilos is the weight we give for drivers [in the regulations], and they [the heaviest car-driver combo at Donington] were carrying 15 kilos of lead.”

Talking of lead, one of the pleasant byproducts of the introduction of hybrid power is the disappearance of the old system of success ballast. This was upped to a 75kg maximum for 2021, but now it’s gone, replaced by restrictions on the number of seconds per lap – down to zero for the championship leader – that hybrid can be used in qualifying, and on laps of usage in the races. Out too is the option-tyre variable, with teams using the medium-compound Goodyear at all circuits other than Thruxton (where the hard is used).

“Option tyres and different weights… I like racing in its purest sense,” smiles Harvey, long a cynic of the option-tyre rules. “There’s still a handicap system [with hybrid restrictions], and in qualifying that’s another aspect to be discovered [at Brands from round two], but I’d rather have everyone on the same weight and tyre. The only slightly confusing thing about hybrid is you knew exactly what everyone was on with ballast and tyres. Although there’s a light [LED in the rear side windows, which flashes when hybrid is being used], you don’t see it all the time.”

Gow is chuffed that the hybrid restrictions at Donington for the races – remember, they weren’t in play for qualifying at the opening round because there was no championship top 10 at this point – seemed to tally nicely with calculations based on data accumulated from the TOCA hybrid test car from late 2020 and 2021. “We always said that hybrid should make roughly the difference that 75 kilos did – varying circuits make varying difference, but usually 75 kilos is about three or four tenths a lap,” he says. “So the increase in performance of the hybrid is about where we expected it to be, which is amazing too! A lot of it was very good guesswork as it turned out…”

Early BTCC points leader Tom Ingram is also a fan of the hybrid rules as he feels it is fairer than the success ballast rules

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Post-Donington points leader Tom Ingram is a fan of this handicapping system too. Last year, he was frequently second in the points heading into an event, which meant 66kg of ballast on his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai – and that’s crippling for a front-wheel-drive car. “It was nice to be going, ‘OK, let’s be tactical, and save some hybrid for there, use it there, use it there,’” he related at the end of the racing last Sunday. “You know what? This is probably the most enjoyable race weekend I’ve had for a while, because we can all be quick all weekend. I think we’re going to end up with bloody fast cars this year.”

And, as the series leader, he doesn’t carry 75kg of ballast into Brands: “From a mental state point of view it’s amazing, because I can go in there saying, ‘Yes, I know I don’t have as much hybrid power for qualifying, but the car’s bloody quick through the corners.’ And that’s going to be enjoyable, that’s going to be nice – it means we stand half a chance of qualifying well and having some good results.”

"I was incredibly pleased with how it went. With all the headwinds we had before us and the hard work that all the teams put in, I think it was a fantastic result. And the racing was great, and that’s the bottom line of it" Alan Gow

Indeed, the general feeling was positive. That was despite not only the addition of hybrid, but the fact that 17 of the 28 cars were running new-for-2022 engines, plus the universal introduction of the latest generation of electronics, also supplied by Cosworth (“That was going to happen anyway, regardless of the hybrid, because the old system was out of date,” points out Gow), throwing in another curveball.

“To come out of Donington with all those cars performing so well, with all those changes and all the late delivery of parts, and the supply-chain issues that we all faced and everything else, I think it was amazing,” Gow concludes. “The overall takeout for me from the weekend was I was incredibly pleased with how it went. With all the headwinds we had before us and the hard work that all the teams put in, I think it was a fantastic result. And the racing was great, and that’s the bottom line of it.”

It was great, but that’s only the beginning of our answer, because, as we’ve already ascertained, it usually is at Donington. If we have, say, seven changes of lead per race at a dry Brands Indy, we’ll know that hybrid-era BTCC is heading too far down the artificial F1 DRS road. But, as Gow has long pointed out, the hybrid usage figures can always be changed if TOCA deems it necessary. For now, therefore, there’s every reason to be optimistic that this is a system that works for the BTCC, and surely it’s a question of when, rather than if, other touring car championships embrace it.

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Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images