The overlooked warning shot to the BTCC grid

If Mercedes had come away from the 2019 Australian Grand Prix with one driver eighth in the standings and its reigning champion only 13th, no one would be saying it's mission accomplished. It's not the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and this isn't 2003.

But after the first round of the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch, despite Andrew Jordan being only three points inside the top 10 and 2018 champion Colin Turkington a full 30 off leader Josh Cook, all signs point towards WSR going the distance in its fight to retain the teams' and manufacturers' crowns.

For this season, the long-serving BMW 125i M Sport has been put out to pasture. After racking up more than 100 podiums since its 2013 debut in the BTCC, it has been replaced and the 3 Series model line makes a return in its place.

The decision to switch to the new 330i M Sport came from above. The 1 Series road car will be replaced by an all-new front-wheel-drive model later this year. As a manufacturer-backed outfit, WSR couldn't be running a discontinued car come mid-season and so the 3 Series project was greenlit.

But that call was only made in October, and it left the team with very limited testing ahead of the first race meeting. WSR's long and decorated history ensures it can never be considered an outsider for the title, but a tight turnaround and a brand new package to develop meant it wasn't expected that the 330i would set the grid alight from the off.

As 2018 runner-up Tom Ingram, another man starting something new as Speedworks becomes a works Toyota team, said ahead of his own new campaign: "WSR has a new car for this season but, very much like us, it has a lot of proper people involved in the team. It might struggle for the first race weekend from a lack of testing, but by the time we get to Donington Park and Thruxton [rounds two and three], WSR is going to be there."

But out of the box, in race two at Brands Hatch, Jordan claimed a small piece of history - getting the new car off the mark with a superb victory. He managed his harder compound tyres to overhaul soft-shod leader Ashley Sutton and romped to the most dominant win of the weekend - close to 10 seconds clear.

But that was the high point. A conservative decision from the top nine on the grid to make a last-minute switch to wets ahead of the first race meant Jordan, Turkington and third WSR driver Tom Oliphant plummeted down the order as the track dried up.

From third (Turkington), fourth (Jordan) and fifth (Oliphant) on the grid, they wound up 15th (Jordan), 19th (Turkington) and 22nd (Oliphant) at the flag.

Although races two and third were run in the dry, tyre choice remained critical and so helped disguise the true competitive order. The soft tyre's high rate of wear along with the peculiar conditions were the making or breaking of scoring a strong result. It was a weekend-long joker that's unlikely to persist over the next nine rounds.

The BMW 330i lends itself to strong straightline performance. It didn't take long for the BTCC engine boost can of worms to be opened

That's why there's plenty of optimism from within the WSR camp - despite the lowly positions its drivers currently have in the championship. The reasons behind the undoing of its racers' weekends is easy to identify.

"The performance on the softs was a bit of a struggle," says Jordan of his Brands experience. "They were good for the first 10 laps or so, and then they went away fairly quickly. But [race day] was exceptionally cold all day, and we know that's not the ideal situation for the softer tyres as you will end up with cold graining, which is what we got. In a way, what happened to us could have been unique given the temperatures."

Assuming those circumstances - like Jordan says - don't rear their head too often then, make no mistake, the clues are there that the 330is will emphatically come good over the remaining nine rounds.

The chief sign was that the three factory BMW drivers topped the weekend's fastest-lap charts - Jordan was quickest overall, ahead of Turkington and Oliphant.

What's more, at the speed trap across the finish line, it was the BMWs that again headed the readings in races two and three. With WSR having switched to a saloon from the 1 Series hatchback, the 330i lends itself to strong straightline performance.

As a result, it didn't take long for the BTCC engine boost can of worms to be opened.

Sutton was passed as early as the pit entrance by Jordan for first place in race two. And the 2017 champion later said: "Andrew's got so much power in that BMW he nearly turned me around on the straight," before adding on Twitter: "It was the bump drafting past that made me chuckle. Had to readjust my helmet every time..."

As for triple champion Turkington, his warning shot to the rest of the grid came despite persistent troubles with the chassis balance at Brands.

"Right from the first test, I've struggled a bit more than the others with the front axle," he says. "It's not working for my driving style.

"It's tiny margins we're looking for. I had the fastest lap [in race three] so it's not like we're going slowly. I can't drive my natural style at the moment to get the best out of the car. But I think once I get the car in the window for me, then I'll feel that we have a lot more pace and can attack. If the weather hadn't have thrown a dummy, then the picture would have looked a lot different."

The potential for WSR's rewards to have been much greater in the opening round of races means that, while there's certainly no premature celebrations, heads haven't dropped after a trying opening to the campaign either.

WSR had to start somewhere with the new 3 Series in terms of bagging points early doors, and it was the greasy asphalt and difficult soft tyres that put paid to a higher haul.

But, if sheer pace is anything to go by, and it usually is, then WSR has designed a package that might just be the class of the BTCC field. In that sense, it's business as usual.