The BTCC Brexit that's thrived for a decade

When James Thompson took part in free practice for the 2010 British Touring Car Championship finale at Brands Hatch at the wheel of a brand-new Toyota Avensis, little could this veteran of the series know that he was setting the tone for what will become the longest-lasting BTCC ruleset in history.

The GPRM-run machine was the first car conforming to what at the time was known as the Next Generation Touring Car formula. The word 'Next' has long become inaccurate, hence it is now known simply as NGTC. Its 10th anniversary of competition comes at the start of the 2021 season and, when NGTC makes it through to 2022, it will have outlasted the 11 BTCC seasons of Super Touring.

Super Touring, of course, originated in the BTCC in 1990 and was adopted by the FIA as the code for tin-top racing worldwide. That got too expensive, and was replaced in the UK by the home-grown BTC Touring. That eventually gave way to the FIA's Super 2000 rules, but these too were becoming troublesome, and BTCC boss Alan Gow came up with a plan.

"Alan had the idea of cutting the front off [the cars] and putting the frame on, and then we did it from there," recalls series technical director Peter Riches.

That entailed a spec subframe - housing brakes, transmission and engine - plus suspension, initially provided by GPRM, but which in 2016 switched to former Vauxhall, Nissan, SEAT and Chevrolet tin-top works team RML.

"With Super 2000 we were fed up with the production suspension," continues Riches. "There was a SEAT team having failures that the works team claimed never happened, and we were convinced theirs were being made to different materials. The money was getting silly, and you couldn't compete with the manufacturers. We decided we needed to get rid of the [production] suspension, and have common fixing points, which takes you to a new front end."

There is a host of other spec parts - from fuel tank to fire safety system - but the other main key to the success of the two-litre, turbocharged NGTC machines was the introduction of an optional customer 'TOCA' engine, supplied since the formula's birth by Swindon Engines, but which switches to M-Sport with the introduction of hybrids for 2022.

"We wouldn't have stood a chance of being able to get on the grid if it wasn't for that engine. To box off one part of the project and know you've got a competitive engine is a huge part" Christian Dick

At present, the BMWs built by West Surrey Racing use the marque's powerplants tuned by Neil Brown Engineering; Team Dynamics is also an NBE customer with its Hondas; and the Motorbase Performance/MB Motorsport Ford mills are fettled by Mountune. The rest, including the Laser Tools Racing/BMR Infiniti driven to the 2020 title by Ash Sutton, use the Swindon unit.

"That's hugely important, and one of the key components of the regulations," asserts Speedworks Motorsport boss Christian Dick, whose team entered the BTCC with the standard GPRM Toyota at the birth of NGTC in 2011. It has risen from the tail end of the field to becoming a title contender with Tom Ingram and, since 2019, the official Toyota Gazoo Racing effort in the series - all still with the TOCA engine.

"We wouldn't have stood a chance of being able to get on the grid if it wasn't for that engine," he adds. "To box off one part of the project and know you've got a competitive engine is a huge part.

"In some respects we're the poster boys for NGTC. We came in with a gentleman driver with no BTCC experience, worked our way to the front, and ended up getting a manufacturer deal off the back of it. I think it's a fantastic set of regulations that we've got. It isn't super-cheap to do, and it has enough engineering scope for us to be able to tie ourselves in knots."

The beauty of NGTC is that the non-reliance on production parts, plus the spec subframes and customer engines, has democratised the BTCC in allowing a colourful array of different models into the series. It's not a case of finding the production base car with the best layout for racing use, and that's great for the fans.

Much the same thinking went into the BTC Touring rules introduced in 2001, but the subframe/engine concept of a decade later was a step too far in those days. For 2020, the grids featured Audi S3, BMW 330i and 125i, Ford Focus ST Mk4, Honda Civic Type R FK8 and FK2, Hyundai i30 N, Infiniti Q50, Mercedes A-Class, Toyota Corolla, Vauxhall Astra and Volkswagen CC - that's an extraordinary 12 different models.

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And a model can stay competitive for the best part of a decade, with the homologation rules written so that a car is eligible for up to five years after being withdrawn from the showrooms. It's only the rate of improvement of recent machines such as the 330i, Corolla and Mk4 Focus that has prompted the disappearance of the 125i, FK2 Civic, Merc and VW from the field in 2021 (although it gains the Cupra).

Take the Toyota Avensis. That was the genesis of NGTC at the end of 2010, yet Speedworks was still winning races and contending for the title with the same model in 2018.

From buying the first customer car for Tony Hughes to drive in 2011, Speedworks then acquired the ex-Thompson test mule "for a supply of parts", according to Dick, although that ended up being raced by Dave Newsham in 2013. Then it gained the confidence to start producing its own cars.

"Pretty much from 2015 onwards we were designing the complete chassis here," says Dick. "GPRM did the initial design and manufacture because we didn't have the skillsets, but as we progressed we made amendments and upgrades. Once we understood what we needed from a new-build, we did it."

The next step was the new-for-2019 Corolla.

"We were trying to get as much information as we could, because it was a brand-new car," recalls Dick. "We had two donor vehicles before anyone had seen one in a showroom. It was very cloak-and-dagger. Every time the doorbell went at the workshop, it was 'who's that?'!"

Dick estimates it costs "around £200,000" to build an NGTC car "from the ground up" - much cheaper than the Super Touring ballpark of £350k. And don't forget, that was over 20 years ago. But Matt Neal, a veteran along with the family Team Dynamics squad of all four BTCC two-litre rulesets, is not quite so positive.

"From a team point of view the BTC Touring regulations were the best," he says. "They were the most affordable, and had close racing, and were less reliant on aero. You could build a car for £120,000 then, and it's double that for NGTC - if you're lucky."

Neal pinpoints the FIA's introduction of Super 2000 as the ruination of BTC Touring, which had been another product of Riches and his TOCA technical team.

"[NGTC rules] have kept costs under control, and what people forget is that a lot of what we do as an organisation these days is to prevent teams spending money, to protect them from themselves" Peter Riches

"They somehow devised the Super 2000 rules to be almost identical to BTC Touring, but completely different!" he says. "There were so many loopholes you could drive through, and it got out of hand."

The indigenous NGTC, by contrast, has become the tin-top equivalent of Brexit - except run by people who actually knew what they were doing.

"Sweden got very close," says Riches when asked about take-up of NGTC elsewhere, "but they had their silhouette, Solution F formula. We talked to others, but the Belgians decided it was too expensive. Others with manufacturers involved don't like it, because you tell them what to do."

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It's wrong to lament the passing of Super Touring, because times are so different to the 1990s heyday of huge manufacturer involvement. NGTC is, simply, a very good attempt at making the best fist of the times we live in. Ask Neal what the best driving experience was over the eras of Super Touring, BTC Touring, Super 2000 and NGTC, and it's no surprise what he plumps for.

"From the adrenalin rush, probably Super Touring," he reflects. "It was no holds barred, but what we've got now is pretty good. We've got more power [approximately 50bhp more than Super Touring], which is great. You've still got to wring the neck of them to get the maximum out of them. You've got to be pretty darn committed."

Funnily enough, Neal pinpoints the brief early-2010s phaseover era, where the regulations temporarily allowed an NGTC engine to be bolted into a Super 2000 car, as a highlight. For 2011, Dynamics used a Super 2000 Civic with the NGTC unit: "It was great! You put a turbo engine in, and the difference in torque was astronomical. And we were only on the 17/9 wheels!" He agrees that it was the closest thing in the modern(ish) era to a Ford Sierra RS500.

But that was only until NGTC was established, and since 2013 all cars have conformed completely to this formula. With TOCA in the process of renewing all its contracts with spec suppliers until the end of 2026, it's got a long life ahead too.

"They have kept costs under control, and what people forget is that a lot of what we do as an organisation these days is to prevent teams spending money, to protect them from themselves," declares Riches.

Problems with NGTC? The components are expected to go on forever. Riches points out that, regarding subframes and suspension, "some teams aren't very good at lifing parts, and when they fail it's always RML's fault!". Or of gearbox supplier Xtrac: "His biggest complaint is he doesn't sell enough spares. One year, the only spare Dynamics fitted was one dog ring, and they were running two cars..." On the engine front, Riches says of 2020 that "probably 50% did a full season, and that has to be quite amazing - even people like [title contender] Ingram only used one engine".

Neal would like to see more of a challenge on tyre choice: "The problem is, for seasoned drivers like me, Jason [Plato] and 'Turks' [Colin Turkington], the Goodyear tyre is too good. You just drive it flat-out from start to finish."

Harking back to those distant days of Super Touring, he explains that his famous win at Donington in 1999 in the Dynamics Nissan was achieved on two hard-compound tyres at the front, a medium at the left-rear and a soft at the right-rear: "It would be good to have something like that again. You had 16 tyres [for an event] and could choose whatever you wanted."

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That, though, would require a return to the longer races of the Super Touring era, and the banning of safety cars (we can but dream...). Purists would prefer to see the top liners such as Turkington and Sutton rewarded, even if that meant a bigger spread across the field. But there's no question that the short, sharp format works - for this era, anyway.

"The thing we've learned is we have to be an entertainment business," points out Riches. "You look back at the Super Touring era because of the manufacturers, the drivers and the characters they were, but the racing wasn't that good. We all thought it was great at the time, but a two-year-old car was two seconds off the pace."