The top 10 BTCC drivers of 2016

For a long time there was no real narrative to the 2016 British Touring Car Championship title battle. And then through the uncertainty came Gordon Shedden to clinch a third title.

The championship delivered its most-competitive season since the single-class format was introduced, with 13 different race winners and an unprecedented eight drivers going into that Brands Hatch showdown in with a sniff of the title.

They all left their mark on an engaging campaign, which is reviewed in the coming issues of Autosport (October 20) and Motorsport News (November 9, with an exclusive team managers' poll of the leading drivers).

Here are the best performers, according to our BTCC correspondent MATT JAMES.

1 GORDON SHEDDEN
Team: Honda (Team Dynamics)
Starts: 30
Wins: 4
Position: 1st

The reigning champion came into the season in an optimistic frame of mind, but realistic that this year would be a tougher nut to crack.

Shedden suffered his share of trouble over the start of the season in the Team Dynamics Honda Civic, but his revival to claim the crown was superb. He rediscovered his qualifying prowess, starting from pole (a feat he managed twice) for the first time since 2013.

His overtaking remains some of the sharpest in the series and he is a pleasure to watch with the car up on its tip-toes, wringing the most out of it. The Scot totally deserved a third crown.

2 COLIN TURKINGTON
Team: Subaru (Team BMR)
Starts: 27
Wins: 5
Position: 4th

When you consider the struggles that the car had until Oulton Park, it's impressive that Turkington had still managed to drag 10 points out of the Team BMR Subaru Levorg by then.

Once the power was there, he shone. Others might point to the fact that the Subaru had bags of boost when the revisions came, but it was still a new chassis to tweak, refine and learn. Turkington managed to do that very quickly.

The only serious blot was a clumsy attempt to pass Rob Collard at Knockhill - which was very unusual for the king of clean racing.

But still being in the title showdown until the penultimate race of the finale was a success in itself.

3 SAM TORDOFF
Team: WSR
Starts: 30
Wins: 2
Position: 2nd

There was a real step up in Tordoff's performance this season, remarkable given his relatively limited experience in tin-tops - indeed, this was only his second season in a rear-wheel-drive BTCC car.

He picked up points when they were on offer and took the most from the reversed-grid events, where he was drawn on pole four times in the WSR BMW 125i M Sport. Alongside his two wins, he took six second places.

Tordoff's mental strength was tested to the maximum over the run-in as he was hunted down by rivals, and he showed great maturity and humility after losing out in the finale.

4 ROB COLLARD
Team: WSR
Starts: 30
Wins: 2
Position: 5th

If only Collard could have qualified better...

The series veteran was leading the points just after the halfway stage of the season, but that loaded him with 75kg of lead and meant his qualifying traumas were heightened.

Despite that, his overtaking remained the best on the grid and he was able to overcome his Saturday struggles. He recorded a joint-highest four fastest laps to show that the Sunday version of his WSR BMW 125i M Sport was potent everywhere.

He was proud of his race performances, and so he should be after one of his strongest campaigns yet.

5 MAT JACKSON
Team: Motorbase
Starts: 30
Wins: 5
Position: 3rd

Jackson won more races than champion Shedden this season and none was more impressive than his mighty defence in Knockhill's finale, where he held off a queue of traffic. He was in the title fight until the end.

He was always looking for the magic bullet in terms of set-up from the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus and found it more often than not, even in tricky conditions. Jackson was able to deal with rapid team-mate Andrew Jordan, too despite some early-season bumps.

This man has a championship in him, and feels some luck is all that was missing this season.

6 ANDREW JORDAN
Team: Motorbase
Starts: 30
Wins: 2
Position: 8th

Coming to a Motorbase Performance Ford Focus was another switch for Jordan, who was in a third different car in three seasons.

He brought his engineer Andy Brown with him and the pair conducted a chunk of pre-season testing to build up the data bank.

A win at Thruxton in May seemed like it would spur a golden summer, but it never kicked into life as the team looked for the final fragments to push forwards.

Jordan proved that he knows how to build a campaign by going into the finale still with a shout, before an unlucky accident - and although he was beaten by his team-mate in the overall standings, he did clinch the independents' crown.

7 JASON PLATO
Team: Subaru (Team BMR)
Starts: 27
Wins: 1
Position: 7th

Plato was buzzing with excitement for the Subaru programme, which he had helped pull together over the winter, and he was at the forefront.

He was, though, driving a rear-wheel-drive BTCC car for the first time in his career. Despite his experience and expertise, it took time to unlock the secrets from the Levorg chassis.

He learned as the year went on, but was also experimenting with set-ups and sometimes went down the wrong avenue.

When things clicked, like they did at Knockhill when he won, he could dominate.

8 MATT NEAL
Team: Honda (Team Dynamics)
Starts: 29
Wins: 3
Position: 6th

Neal had the same equipment as Shedden (the best car on the grid) and only won one race fewer in the Team Dynamics machine.

He was also in the title hunt all the way through, and showed that tactics and guile can help build a points total. There were a couple of mistakes, and the biggest probably came at Thruxton, when he was the catalyst for a multi-car pile-up.

His win at Knockhill in race two was vintage Neal, sneaking up and taking his chances when they came. Signing off the season in the medical centre at Brands was a cruel blow.

9 ASHLEY SUTTON
Team: MG (Triple Eight)
Starts: 30
Wins: 1
Position: 13th

The 2015 Renault Clio Cup champion came, saw and conquered in his maiden season in the BTCC.

He was on pole by meeting two, and was a winner by meeting five. He would have had another victory at Silverstone but for a technical infringement with the Triple Eight Racing MG6.

What most impressed about Sutton was his controlled aggression in the heat of battle and his opportunistic overtaking moves.

He was not intimidated by those around him, and made the most of the car underneath him. He has learned very quickly.

10 TOM INGRAM
Team: Speedworks Motorsport
Starts: 30
Wins: 2
Position: 10th

Ingram did everything that was asked of him in 2016. He made a podium breakthrough last year and then pushed himself even further in the Speedworks Toyota Avensis.

A highly accomplished win in the first round of the season was followed by another (inherited after Sutton's exclusion) at Silverstone and four further podium finishes.

There were some slips early in the year that were frustrating, and it took until the middle of the season for these to be fully ironed out.

His next step is to eradicate those errors, and then there will be a championship contender here.

THE REST

Two-time race winner Adam Morgan had a new engineering team around his Ciceley Racing Mercedes-Benz A-Class.

He hit the ground running at Brands with a win and repeated that at Thruxton. As others got up to speed with new cars and the new RML-derived control parts, life became tougher.

Aiden Moffat needed to step up after his maiden podium in 2015 in the sister Ciceley car. His second rostrum didn't come until the very last round but there were other building blocks in his career development, such as a front row start at Thruxton.

Aron Smith joined brand new outfit Team BKR in a trusty VW CC, the same car that had been used by Turkington in 2015.

BKR stuck with the older-spec GPRM kit that meant Smith was generally up against it. He took his chances early on and capped his season with an under-pressure win at Rockingham.

While team-mate Sutton took the headlines, Josh Cook matched him in terms of lap time in the Triple Eight Racing MG6. He was unlucky more than anything else, and losing a second-place finish after exclusion at Silverstone was a blow.

Switching to front-wheel-drive was Rob Austin, who sold up his team and joined Handy Motorsport in a Toyota Avensis.

It took a time for Austin and his engineers to get to grips with the new drivetrain, but there was serious progress over the second half of the campaign. He should have had two podiums at Brands Hatch's finale, but for an alternator failure.

Another Toyota driver was Jake Hill, who shone in the Team Hard car. He gave (and took) some knocks in the rough and tumble, but when things went well, he was a top-six threat.