Top 10 BTCC drivers of 2025

Tom Ingram was a deserving victor of the 2025 British Touring Car Championship in what was a funny old season for the series.

The vagaries of the sporting regulations meant there were 13 different race winners – and Ingram wasn’t even among the first eight to stand atop the podium. But there was never much doubt that the championship was going to boil down to a two-way fight between the 2022 king and Ash Sutton.

Strategic variations brought on by those rules meant they did not always face each other directly on track, but there were always other names in the mix.

There were some thrilling moments, and plenty of intrigue – not least in trying to select our 10 standout performers…

10. Tom Chilton

Chilton was back to his best this year

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• Championship position: 7th
• Wins: 2

The Surrey veteran had his best season - an Indian Summer, perhaps - since 2018. But such was the number of high-quality performers in 2025 that he nets a lower position than in years when he has not performed so well.

Chilton proved to be the most reliable of the wingmen to Ingram at the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai stable in what the eventual champion described as by far the best season he has ever had in terms of help from his team-mates. The 40-year-old extrovert’s best moment was pole at the Donington GP circuit and victory, after swapping the lead with Ingram in order to allow both to grab a lap-leader point.

He also won on the Leicestershire venue’s National layout, and only appalling luck at the Brands finale - a double alternator failure - cost him sixth in the final points table to Excelr8 team-mate Adam Morgan.

9. Daryl DeLeon

DeLeon took a step forward in BTCC this year by taking his maiden race win

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• Championship position: 13th
• Wins: 1

After a season and a half in back-of-the-grid Cupra machinery, the smiling Irish-born Anglo-Filipino youngster got his break with the mighty West Surrey Racing BMW ensemble - only for the team to struggle over the first half of the season.

DeLeon was still able to claim his maiden BTCC race win during that ‘perfect storm’ Brands Indy weekend where everything played to the car’s strengths, but otherwise he was having a tough time.

Then came the mid-season (minor) weight break and car improvements to the 3 Series. DeLeon’s qualifying record of 2-4-1-1 over the final four weekends was a fantastic sign-off to the season, and he was able to scrape enough points together to beat team-mate Charles Rainford to the Jack Sears Trophy crown. But bad fortune denied him the opportunity to add another race win to his tally.

If he doesn’t win the Porsche Carrera Cup GB scholarship and stays put at WSR, expect some strong progress in 2026.

8. Charles Rainford

Rainford showed himself as a solid successor to Turkington at WSR

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• Championship position: 8th
• Wins: 1

Recency bias would swap him to a spot below DeLeon, but this effervescent rookie was clearly a step ahead for much of the season, with Rainford qualifying best of the duo at each of the first seven events.

After four seasons in the Carrera Cup, Rainford arrived at WSR fizzing with excitement and immediately looked good, proving that he was indeed a worthy long-term prospect in his role effectively replacing four-time champion Colin Turkington.

As a contrast to the ultra-smooth DeLeon, Rainford betrays his historic roots with an exuberant driving style. As far as racecraft was concerned, he professed to getting duffed up on the first weekend but soon developed the aggression required - although probably would have been better to rein it back slightly on the odd occasion.

Still, a hugely impressive season to finish eighth in the main championship, five places above DeLeon.

7. Mikey Doble

Doble took his first BTCC race win at Snetterton this year

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• Championship position: 18th
• Wins: 1

There were few performances more impressive in the 2025 BTCC than the taciturn Surrey up-and-comer’s defeat of Sutton at Snetterton in May to break his duck in the series.

Doble had shown glimpses of talent in his first two seasons with the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, and the car was running superbly this year without the hefty hybrid.

Doble played the tyre strategy game perfectly to leave himself with a set of soft Goodyears for the final race at Snetterton. Sutton had softs too, and more TOCA Turbo Boost, yet it was the four-time champion who was coerced into a mistake and had to concede victory.

The mid-season fire that destroyed the Astras and forced Doble into a Cupra Leon for the final four rounds cost him the Independents’ title, but even then his canny racecraft in the last race of the season almost gifted him an almost-impossible achievement.

6. Dan Rowbottom

Rowbottom bounced back from a winless 2024 campaign by taking three victories in 2025

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• Championship position: 5th
• Wins: 3

The Midlander was very much persona non grata within the Alliance Racing stable as the chequered flag fell on his third season with the Ford Focus ST squad, but that should not erase the huge step forward he made in 2025.

Rowbottom’s recovery from a very serious heart operation last November seemed to produce a more devil-may-care attitude, and he was able to take what is renowned as a very tricky car to drive to the limit for much of the season, claiming three race wins to move his career total to five. That was enough to put him into a battle with highly respected team-mate Dan Cammish for third in the championship.

It also put him into team leader Sutton’s orbit some of the time, leading to the unfortunate clash at Donington GP. But that, and the Brands finale fiasco with Cammish, should not detract from the fact that Rowbottom is now a genuine contender. Expect fireworks on his expected move to his pal Jason Plato’s new team…

5. Josh Cook

Cook won the 2025 finale at Brands Hatch

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• Championship position: 12th
• Wins: 1

He’s simply a proper, top-quality, BTCC driver. But the West Countryman would not have expected to end the season playing a big part in turning around the fortunes of the beleaguered Speedworks Motorsport Toyota squad.

That’s because he started the season with the returning One Motorsport Honda operation. Sometimes it looked as though the wayward Civics had been sitting gathering dust for 12 months, but Cook was able to grab a mighty third place at Thruxton – to follow up an identical result at Snetterton - after great work from the crew rebuilding the car following a hefty qualifying shunt.

Then team owner Steve Dudman fell ill and withdrew the team, leaving Cook on the sidelines for two rounds before his return with Speedworks. 

Here, he formed a tasty combo with three-time champion Gordon Shedden. That resulted in a second place at Silverstone - where Cook was deliberately going ‘rogue’ with set-up as an engineering exercise - and then a superb recovery from a back-of-the-grid start at the Brands finale to take victory in the final race of the season. If Speedworks can keep these two on board for 2026, expect a proper attack.

4. Dan Cammish

Cammish equalled his best result of third in the BTCC standings

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• Championship position: 3rd
• Wins: 3

The Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman is entitled to feel a little bit grumpy at being graded one place below his championship position. In truth, he was nailed-on for third in these rankings for most of the season before Jake Hill was allowed to once again prove the quality that had taken him to the 2024 crown.

Cammish was very much part of a BTCC ‘Big Four’ in 2025, but paradoxically that dropped him from the championship hunt sooner than he deserved. Over six successive race weekends from Brands Indy to Knockhill, he was the top-finishing Alliance Ford Focus driver in race one, and usually that consigned him to using hard tyres in race two - and the consequent dismal finish. As a result, where he should have been up with Sutton in the points, instead he was battling Rowbottom.

That needled at Cammish, who is a puritanical racer trying to thrive in a championship full of modern-day sporting regulation curveballs. But apart from his Brands Indy gaffe, which mortified him, this was a season where he proved his quality.

3. Jake Hill

Hill had a solid campaign ahead of his move into GT next year

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• Championship position: 4th
• Wins: 3

“Oh mate, I feel like you’re my counsellor. You come and see me at the end of each day, and I tell you all my problems!” That was Jake Hill to your Autosport chap during the first half of the season, when the reigning champion was trying to eke results out of a slow West Surrey Racing BMW, the team absolutely caught on the hop by the removal of hybrid and the resulting loss of weight - and realignment of distribution within the car.

Little did Hill know that he was about to go through a debilitating bout of labyrinthitis, which forced him to sit out qualifying and the races at Croft - just as WSR had turned a corner.

The diminutive Kentishman was still far from 100% when he returned at Knockhill, and the psychological blow of qualifying third behind young team-mates Rainford and DeLeon didn’t help. But his race day was exquisite.

Two wins (to follow up his early-season Brands success) preceded a late-season purple patch that carried him into the fight for third in the points. Only a first-race flat tyre at the Brands finale denied him that honour. But he leaves the BTCC for the world of international sportscar racing with his head held high.

2. Ash Sutton

Sutton ran Ingram close this year

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• Championship position: 2nd
• Wins: 5

The four-time champion’s qualifying record over the second half of the season reads like this: 11-10-10-12-11. Yet somehow, Sutton carried the title fight to the penultimate race before having to concede to Ingram.

Of course, the TTB deficit faced by the top runners in the championship plays its part in that underwhelming Saturday form. And here, Sutton’s Alliance Ford seemed to be affected more than Ingram’s Excelr8 Hyundai. Yet there were times when his deficit to team-mates Cammish and Rowbottom (who had their own TTB penalties) was more than the expected boost delta. Qualifying was a trial, sometimes the car not right, sometimes procedural finger trouble.

Sutton remains a peerless racer, helping him to notch up five wins over the season in the ageing Focus. He also played the tyre strategy game to perfection, to the extent of conceding a third place at Oulton Park in anticipation of rain later in the day that prevented him having to use the soft tyre. As a result, he stayed in front in the championship until August, and there’s no way that should have happened given the machinery at his disposal.

1. Tom Ingram

Ingram added to his 2022 success by becoming champion in 2025

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• Championship position: 1st
• Wins: 7

Of course he was going to be our number one. It seemed absurd that the Coventry-based High Wycombe native was only a ‘one-time BTCC champion’. Now he’s added another.

Ingram’s single-minded focus - behind the chirpy, cuddly, post-qualifying-cake-club exterior lies the definition of ‘smiling assassin’ - and the hard work from Excelr8 Motorsport on rolling out a monster of a Hyundai led to the success. Straight after defeat in the 2024 finale, they were at Anglesey for three days of testing with the hybrid removed. That was arguably the biggest single contributing factor behind Ingram’s title.

Such was his relentless form that Ingram struggled to pick out a highlight from a season that netted seven race wins. When pushed, he plumps for his last-to-fourth drive at Snetterton after an uncharacteristic shunt in race two; and let’s add another - an astonishing fourth on the hard tyres at Oulton Park.

Many in the paddock grumbled about the Hyundai’s engine, but it’s also the age-old racing reality of high corner-exit speeds playing one part, the i30 N’s aero another. And the motor’s not bad either… Ingram used this all to perfection. A great champion.

With apologies to…

Three-time BTCC champion Shedden misses out on our top 10 ranking

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Gordon Shedden, Adam Morgan and Senna Proctor all had seasons (or part thereof) that would have put them comfortably in the top 10 in most other campaigns.

His excellent wet-weather Oulton victory aside, Shedden had a torrid time on his BTCC return with Speedworks until the Toyota engine was ditched and replaced with the customer TOCA powerplant for the final three rounds. He was outscored by only Ingram, Sutton and Hill from then on. Let’s hope he’s back in 2026.

Morgan and Proctor completed a very handy Excelr8 Hyundai quartet. Morgan was rejuvenated by his return to front-wheel-drive machinery, while Proctor instantly adapted on his return for round four after a three-and-a-half-year absence, but it has to be factored in that, as a result of his late entry, he never suffered from a TTB penalty.

Ronan Pearson and James Dorlin both starred in qualifying at Speedworks before commercial realities bit, and their team-mate Aron Taylor-Smith and fellow Celtic veteran Aiden Moffat (WSR BMW) both showed well on occasion.

Restart Racing was a story of 2025 with its new-build Hyundais. Dan Lloyd bounced back from mid-season overheating woes to beat Doble and team-mate Chris Smiley to the Independents crown, and also won outright at Silverstone. The other winner at that track was Sam Osborne - an emotional breakthrough for the Alliance Ford driver after seven years of trying.