Ranking the top 10 BTCC drivers of 2021

The British Touring Car Championship field was this season probably the closest it's been in the past decade of NGTC regulations. Twelve different drivers won races, and six more stood on the podium at some point.

Some of the old machinery - the celebrated Honda Civic FK2, the BMW 125i M Sport, Mercedes A-Class, Audi S3 and Volkswagen CC - departed into the annals of BTCC history. What we were left with was a fiercely competitive season, with familiar names and teams at the sharp end joined by some surprise packages who performed above expectations.

Ash Sutton was supreme in his second season aboard the BMR-run Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50 to wrap things up with a round to spare. But how did he and the other leading contenders shape up in the eyes of Autosport?

PLUS: Why the BTCC's ballast increase couldn't stop champion Sutton 

10. Dan Lloyd

Dan Lloyd, Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

A chance chat with Power Maxed Racing about how his family’s printing firm could do business with the team snowballed into this amiable Yorkshireman landing a seat alongside Jason Plato for what was his first full BTCC season. After two years fighting it out at the front in the ultra-competitive TCR Europe realm in Honda Civic machinery, Lloyd confessed to taking some time to get back into the NGTC rhythm aboard the PMR Vauxhall Astra, but once he had he was a revelation.

His lack of a win compared to Rowbottom and Proctor puts him behind them here, but then again the Astra is now becoming one of the older cars on the grid, and the fact that he drove it to four podiums over the last three race weekends reflects very well upon him. Lloyd reckons he has the commercial package ready to stay in the BTCC for 2022, and he’ll surely be moving up the shopping list of any team with available seats. Like Rowbottom, it just shows what you can do if you stick at it and take the chances when they come.

9. Senna Proctor

Senna Proctor, BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

At the start of the season, no one would have expected him to make the top 10, because he wasn’t actually on the grid. And even when he joined the BTC Honda stable for round two, you’d have got long odds on what he achieved. But how perceptions can change when someone finds themselves in the right environment, as Proctor did alongside Cook.

When he took pole third time out at Oulton Park, it was the first time he’d even qualified in the top four in his five-year BTCC career, and he went on to do that four times in the final seven rounds, including another pole at Brands GP. Unlike Cook, Proctor has an aggressive, hustling style – watch out, kerbs – that betrays his family’s rallycross routes, but somehow it proved equally effective for what must be a very versatile set-up on the Civic.

He often spoke of having difficulties getting the tyre warm-up phase right for those qualifying attacks, and that’s the kind of thing a winter’s testing in preparation for a season, which of course he lacked this year, would surely address.

8. Dan Rowbottom

Daniel Rowbottom, Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The emergence of this guy was one of the feelgood stories of the BTCC this season. His childhood karting career suggests that he could have made a very decent living on the international stage, but lack of family funds stymied his efforts to establish himself in car racing, and an underwhelming 2019 rookie BTCC campaign in a Ciceley Mercedes had him written off by many.

With Honda UK pulling its backing from Dynamics, Rowbottom brought his Cataclean sponsorship and that tied in nicely with the team’s faithful supporter Halfords. But team boss Matt Neal’s faith in Rowbottom’s ability did cause the team to lose another substantial backer, to its great financial cost.

Once he’d got his feet under the table, he proved a very useful driver – pole at Brands Indy was one thing, at Thruxton quite another… So too was taking his maiden win at Oulton while team-mate Shedden was breathing down his neck. If anything, this perhaps increased the self-imposed pressure earlier than it should have done, and Rowbottom was by no means perfect, but like Shedden he was back on an upward trajectory by the end of the season, and that bodes well for 2022.

7. Gordon Shedden

Gordon Shedden, Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

He finished ahead of Rory Butcher in the final standings, but you have to say that he was walking into what Boris Johnson might have described as an ‘oven-ready’ title-contending situation: back with his old mates at Dynamics, in an FK8 Civic that Dan Cammish had nearly won a championship in, and with technical chief Barry Plowman now engineering him after team boss Matt Neal’s not-quite-retirement.

For various reasons it just didn’t quite work out for him for much of the season: there were a lot of incidents, while a pole for round two at Snetterton, which likely would have led to a very strong Sunday and a morale boost for the rest of the season, was denied when the car was excluded for an illegal rear-wing angle – finger trouble, said the team.

Perhaps Shedden was overthinking things; perhaps it shouldn’t have been taken for granted that this NGTC talisman would step back in after three years away and take up where he left off. Whatever, by the end of the season he was truly on it – a superb penultimate weekend at Donington netted two wins, and a plucky double podium at the Brands GP finale sent him into the off-season on a high that should be built upon in 2022.

6. Rory Butcher

Rory Butcher, Toyota Gazoo Racing UK Toyota Corolla

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

His dad owns Knockhill, his sister runs it, his brother-in-law is one of the all-time BTCC greats, and yet Butcher is one of the most humble and modest of the star drivers in the series. He also doesn’t seem to exude the self-confidence of rivals such as Ingram, the man he replaced at the Speedworks Toyota squad in 2021, which makes you all the more pleased for him when he wins a race.

After recent seasons in the FK2 Civic and fourth-generation Focus ST, Butcher found the Corolla – developed around Ingram – too edgy to drive and this led to a disappointing start to the season. Then, with veteran engineer Paul Ridgway, he moved in a different direction. From summer onwards the Toyota was frequently the car to beat.

When he’s confident, Butcher’s elegant driving style is lovely to watch, and that’s what we saw more and more of, particularly on his stunning Silverstone weekend. Without that catastrophic engine failure in qualifying at Croft, he’d have come very close to the top five in the points. What he really needs is a second consecutive season in the same car – something he’s never had in his BTCC career – and then he could easily be a proper title contender rather than rank outsider.

5. Jake Hill

Jake Hill, MB Motorsport Ford Focus ST

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The most difficult thing here is that of the five final-round title contenders, someone has to slot in at number five. Sorry Jake…

What a difference a year has made though. For the first time since the Ginetta Junior series adopted the G40 in 2010, Hill had a new car to drive, and he made full use of the MB Motorsport Ford Focus to elevate himself from chirpy, popular underdog to chirpy, popular top-liner.

It’s easy to forget the upheaval of last winter, whereby AmD chief Shaun Hollamby and Hill’s team-mate Sam Osborne’s father Pete bought Motorbase off founder David Bartrum, only for Hollamby to leave the partnership pre-season once the AmD/MB staff were installed. Hill and engineer Craig Porley found their old FK2 Civic philosophy transferred pretty well to the user-friendly Focus, and results immediately came. The car also appeared to deal very well with success ballast, its main shortfall being that it took too much out of the soft-compound Goodyear that was used at four events.

Then, after a superb Croft, Hill landed the runner-up spot in the points, 66kg of weight, and he was nowhere at Silverstone. Such is his status now that he was able to convert that into a reversed-grid win with the weight off. Like any of the top five here, it’s easy to envisage Hill as a BTCC champion if circumstances are right. He’s now under the management of MB chief Mark Blundell and that can only help his cause for that to materialise.

4. Tom Ingram

Tom Ingram, Excelr8 Trade Price Cars Hyundai i30 Fastback N Performance

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

What he and engineer Spencer Aldridge achieved on their joint exodus from their alma mater of Speedworks Motorsport to Excelr8 Motorsport was extraordinary. Remember that Excelr8 had just two seasons in the BTCC under its belt: one with ancient MG6 machinery and the second with the new Hyundai i30 N that, thanks to COVID lockdowns, had little development under its belt.

Ingram and Aldridge felt that the longer ‘Fastback’ shape of the Hyundai perhaps offered more potential than the hatchback Toyota Corolla they’d left, and certainly it was no worse. Indeed, this was a typical Ingram season: race wins and in contention for the title come the final weekend, ultimately falling short.

The most obvious thing to pinpoint is that the Hyundai didn’t like carrying ballast, and with 66kg on board at most rounds this was a very heavy burden for a front-wheel-drive car. With weight off, Ingram was sensational and, bearing in mind Sutton’s reticence to get involved in fights this year, his racecraft was arguably the most exciting – think of his sensational passes to win on Oliphant at Brands Indy and Jelley at Knockhill.

In the end, perhaps the biggest shame was his turbo wastegate drama that prevented him setting a qualifying time at Oulton Park. Without that, he could have come very close to Sutton’s score.

3. Josh Cook

Josh Cook, BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The way he sets the car up on fast-corner entry to drift through the turn is beautiful to watch, and showed utter confidence in what he had beneath him in his third season in the BTC Racing Honda Civic. The difference this year is that the Brackley squad’s two-year deal with Civic builder Dynamics had come to an end; BTC went its own way, including opting for the customer TOCA Swindon engine, which certainly didn’t do any harm.

The car worked with and without weight, except at the team’s expected bogey track of Snetterton. Impressively, Cook was the only driver to win the first race of a weekend while carrying more than 27kg of ballast, and he did it twice: on 33kg at Thruxton and on 39kg at Brands GP. He scored 20 more points than anyone else in race ones, despite carrying the fourth highest average success weight. He was also strong in race twos, but on reversed-grid results he shipped 52 points to Sutton, and this is where Cook lost the chance for his first crown.

He did his job, and the car was well engineered by unrelated ex-F3000/GP2 wizard Mick Cook, but BTC operationally let itself down. Cook copped a stop-go penalty at the first Thruxton weekend because the car was too late off its jacks – he was on slicks in the damp, and lapped 2s quicker than Jake Hill, who damn near won on similar rubber… A fuel pressure problem put him out at Knockhill, and then a wishbone failure at Silverstone cost Cook second place in race two when he failed the ride-height test, which naturally put him out of contention in the finale. That’s where the points – and a title shot – went.

2. Colin Turkington

Colin Turkington, Team BMW BMW 330i M Sport

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

While Sutton and the Infiniti can look spectacular even on an in-lap, the similarly rear-wheel-drive BMW 330i M Sport appears to demand razor-sharp precision. Such a demand, along with the massive tightening up of the field and occasional boost tweaks over the years that have not helped the BMWs, mean that the four-time champion can be excused the couple of high-profile-yet-small errors he made this season, where he again worked with veteran tin-top engineer John Waterman.

The feeling is that Turkington is still extracting the absolute maximum from a package that is perhaps lacking compared to some others on straightline speed. Certainly, when he starts at the front, he’s the same classy act as ever; the difficulties this year came when he was buried in the pack.

Ironically, the two late-season reversed-grid wins that just about allowed him to salvage second in the points came from being a bit jammy by getting drawn on pole after second-race incidents (remarkably, eight of the 10 reversed-grid poles went to BMW drivers!). But such is the random way of the BTCC, and that runner-up spot was no less than this master of the BTCC deserved.

1. Ash Sutton

Ashley Sutton, Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

He bounced and lurched that ultra-soft Infiniti Q50 to his third BTCC title. For the first time, he led a BTCC season from the front, so concentrated on maximising each race weekend, where he inevitably started on heavy success ballast.

The Infiniti seems to carry that weight well but, with maximum ballast increased this year from 60kg to 75kg, claiming pole and winning race one on a weekend was near-impossible. Even so, the new ‘Mr Play It Safe’ Sutton we saw this year never qualified outside the top 10 when on full ballast, and even set two race one fastest laps on 75kg.

With weight off, he vastly outscored everyone across the race twos, and was also 16 points clear of anyone else in reversed-grid races, where his average ballast following second-race successes was the highest of all. That was the whole modus operandi of Sutton and engineer Tony Carrozza: do as well as you can in race one; then harvest the points. That Infiniti may be fast whatever its weight, but it takes a unique talent such as Sutton’s to exploit that. The class act of 2021.

Ashley Sutton, Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Those who missed out…

Aiden Moffat, eighth in the points, has justification for being most aggrieved over his omission – his level in 2021 would have waltzed him into the 2020 list, but such was the step forward in competitiveness of the BTCC this year that leaving some out was tough. Moffat improved massively in the LTR Infiniti set-up, and his best weekend yet in the BTCC at Croft netted him a win. But, in the end, it was a car that his team-mate proved was a title winner.

Adam Morgan was another difficult one to miss out. Ignore the two reversed-grid wins, because they came from the fluke of a random draw. What was impressive was the speed he extracted early and mid-season in his and Ciceley Motorsport’s first season with a rear-wheel-drive BTCC car. Indeed, there were times when his independent BMW rivalled Turkington’s. Only a terrible run of late-season incidents that generally weren’t his fault dropped him down the order. Team-mate Tom Chilton confessed to not getting to grips with rear-wheel drive, making Morgan’s season all the more impressive.

Over at the ‘official’ BMW team, Tom Oliphant started brightly and had a superb race-winning weekend at Brands Indy, hard on the heels of getting engaged. Everything was lovely in his life. But a controversial heavy shunt precipitated by a clash with Jason Plato at Oulton Park seemed to send him into a spiral, alleviated only by a double podium at Thruxton. His very likeable team-mate Stephen Jelley led a charmed reversed-grid existence (four poles!), and that helped boost his score as he returned to West Surrey Racing after a decade away.

Jason Plato was plagued by a mystery straightline speed problem on his PMR Vauxhall, which he felt was perhaps in the installation of the engine on his car – it didn’t affect Lloyd anywhere near as badly. It meant he lacked the ability to make progress in races, which was especially galling after qualifying third at Donington.

Jason Plato, Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images