Why the 2020 BTCC season can still be a corker

It's four months overdue, but the start of the British Touring Car Championship is here, and a slightly depleted field will take to the track at Donington Park this weekend for the first of what is scheduled to be nine triple-headers squeezed in between now and mid-November.

As reigning champions, Colin Turkington and the West Surrey Racing-run BMW squad have to start as favourites, but there is a high number of unknowns - different driver/car combinations, new machines making their debuts, post-coronavirus rule changes... and people wearing masks.

Autosport therefore sat down over a socially distanced telephone line with 1992 BTCC champion and ITV4 expert pundit Tim Harvey to predict what might happen.

Can anyone beat Colin Turkington?

"The answer is: yes they can," asserts Harvey. "Particularly in a truncated season where the races are coming thick and fast, and we've got three less races so the element of luck could play a bigger part than before. In terms of people who can stop him, there are huge unknowns.

"We don't know how competitive Ash Sutton in the Infiniti could be - potentially that car could be a BMW beater, and we know that Ash is a special talent. It wouldn't take much more for Dan Cammish to be there in the Honda, and Tom Ingram in the Toyota could be due for a stellar season. Everything is shaping up nicely, and we also have some real outsiders like Jake Hill in a Honda."

Harvey, of course, has played the role of mentor to Cammish in his career from his title-winning Porsche Carrera Cup GB days.

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"The Civic [in FK8 form] is a quick car," he points out, "but it hasn't been the perfect car in terms of adaptability to different conditions or its suitability to all circuits. It's what the Mercedes F1 team would have called 'a diva car' a couple of years ago.

"Whether they've made the improvements they need to challenge consistently at every track I don't know, but Dan has learned the art of touring car racing. Now it depends on luck and whether the car is better at all circuits and in all conditions."

Will we miss having Andrew Jordan and Jason Plato on the grid?

Jordan and Plato (pictured at the Silverstone Media Day) are the highest-profile victims of the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Jordan had to quit his WSR BMW drive, while the Power Maxed Racing-run Vauxhall squad, which should have run Plato and the returning Mat Jackson, has opted to sit out 2020 to conserve resources for 2021.

"We won't miss them while we're being enthralled by the action in front of our eyes," states Harvey. "But will I personally miss them? Yes I will. Would they add something on the track? Yes they would.

"AJ only just came up short in 2019 and he would definitely have been a challenger, and Jason is always good for the BTCC whether that's on the track or on the microphone. And he could be denied his 100th win. He'll be back next year, but he'll be another year older... And I was looking forward to Mat's return immensely."

How will the new cars perform?

It's nothing new to have a Motorbase Performance-built-and-run Ford Focus ST on the grid, but the fourth-generation machine looks to be a cracker from early testing pace. And the Hyundai i30 of Excelr8 Motorsport, which replaces the team's elderly MG6s, seems promising.

"It's great to see an evolution of the BTCC in the form of new cars in the championship," enthuses Harvey. "They were designed pre-COVID, and I'm not sure we'd see people taking a risk on doing that now. Both look like really good cars.

"The drivers at Motorbase say the new car is night-and-day better than the old car - you always expect them to say that, but it's got a lower centre of gravity, a new shell, and a more responsive chassis. Rory Butcher [who has joined from AmD Racing] will invigorate the team and I expect great things.

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"The Hyundai looks an absolutely perfect car in terms of size and weight distribution. Both the drivers are race winners, the team look to be well organised, and there's no reason why they wouldn't be able to shine. All the cars have the same underpinnings, but you still have to engineer them to get performance out of them."

How can Ash Sutton get on in the resurrected Infiniti Q50?

There's a lot more to this one that meets the eye. Laser Tools Racing saw the potential in the Infiniti used back in 2015 by the Support Our Paras team, and Aiden Moffat made a mid-season switch in 2019 to the rear-wheel-drive machine from his Mercedes A-Class. Former champion Sutton has now joined, along with a portion of the Team BMR squad that ran him to glory in the Subarus.

"You have to be very careful, because we're not talking about the same cars as appeared for Support Our Paras a few years ago," points out Harvey. "These are new-build cars, and if you look at them next to the BMW there's not a lot of difference. They're newly engineered, newly inspired, with new aero. It's a completely new car."

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A proper weapon in Sutton's hands?

"The guy is exceptional behind the wheel, in qualifying, with his racecraft, with his overtaking in wet and dry conditions," says Harvey. "If you asked every team manager for their top three drivers, he'd be in everybody's top three."

That'll be a yes, then...

What about the new team/driver combinations?

There are a few of those dotted around the BTCC in 2020, but there are three in particular that should pose a threat at the front. Veteran Tom Chilton hops over from the Motorbase Ford line-up to join Josh Cook in the BTC Racing Honda Civic FK8s, Butcher takes Chilton's place in the Motorbase attack, and Hill shuffles across from the Trade Price Cars Racing Audi (run as a satellite of AmD) to the AmD-run MB Motorsport Civic FK2.

"All of them are now experienced drivers," says Harvey. "On Tom's day he can be blisteringly quick, but whether BTC can consistently find the right set-up on what I've already called that diva car I don't know. He will have a winning package and should be able to extract the most out of it, but he'll probably be upset if he sees his old team beating him!

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"Rory [Butcher] is a very quick driver, and back with Motorbase I expect that to click very early. The early testing pace has been very good.

"With Jake Hill, that FK2 Civic is still a very fast car - one of the best in the BTCC - and this is the best opportunity he has ever had. The team know how to go about racing, and now that Mark Blundell is behind the team he's got less stress on the commercial side. For someone who won a race in the Audi S3, something no one else could do, to get into the FK2 Honda is a great opportunity."

Will the new tyre regulations affect the racing?

BTCC tradition over the past few years has been for two compounds of Dunlop tyre to be available for race day, with each driver obliged to choose a 'joker' race to run the option rubber.

For 2020 and the switch to Dunlop sister company Goodyear, that initially meant a choice between the soft and medium compound at six of the 10 rounds, with the hard mandatory for all three races at the tyre-killing Thruxton, the medium for all three at Donington, and a further twist for Croft and Snetterton, with drivers obliged to run each of the soft, medium and hard compounds in one race at each event.

After a teams' meeting with series organiser TOCA in May, it was decided that the medium will be used throughout eight of the nine rounds, with the hard at Thruxton, due to the pressures of back-to-back events and reduced staffing for the teams as racing recovers following its coronavirus pause.

"The situation we've had before is that, depending on the time of the year, some tyres didn't work when it was cold," says Harvey. "Degradation was never a huge effect. I'm actually looking forward to having less variation. We already have reversed grids and success ballast, and I think that's enough.

"The tyre choice was an interesting aside, but I'm looking forward to seeing every car race on the same tyres, and you only have to consider the weight and the reversed grids in terms of equality. I don't think it will detract from the racing."

What's it going to be like racing into November?

The BTCC doesn't traditionally go beyond early October for its championship finale at Brands Hatch. This time, the post-COVID calendar takes the circus from an early October date in the garden of England to the wilds of the north up at Croft. Then there's a late October visit to Snetterton, where the wind can really rip across the flat East Anglian countryside, and when the clocks will be going back between qualifying and race day. It all finishes on the Brands Indy Circuit on 15 November.

"If for any unforeseen reason we end up with racing in the dark, it could be a problem, but Alan Gow [series boss] and TOCA are all over the situation," says Harvey, "and with the additional support races on the Saturday that should free up time on the Sundays."

Will the likely cold weather make a difference?

"It should all be OK if they're on the standard tyre," he reckons. "I don't see that being a problem - I don't think the weather will be an influencing issue."

Will it be strange without the fan engagement?

Initially, MotorSport Vision - which operates Donington, Brands and Oulton Park, respective host venues of the opening three rounds - was allowing spectators to buy tickets online but there would be no paddock or pitlane admission.

However, earlier this week, it was announced that fans would, after all, not be allowed to attend Donington, as the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) had determined that the BTCC fell under the bracket of 'elite sport'.

The following event is at Knockhill in Scotland, which is subject to different government guidelines.

"I'm genuinely sad for the fans because the whole point of the BTCC has always been the access and the fan engagement," laments Harvey. "And it's not just the fans that are losing out. The sponsors are there for the TV coverage and the hospitality, and if you take the hospitality away you've lost 50% of what you get out of it. The racing on the TV will look very much the same, it'll just be different for those who are at the event.

"I first raced in touring cars in 1987, and to not have fans around the paddock will be strange. Working there will be different too."

How odd will it be to see Steve Rider in a mask?

The ever-smooth, suave Rider is the maestro-of-quippery anchor of ITV4's coverage, switching in an instant from acerbic remarks about the BTCC elite to coming across like the Ginetta Junior youngsters' favourite, indulgent schoolteacher. He's got a job do, and he'll do it - but you won't see half his face.

"It will probably be weirder for Steve because he'll have a lot of things to get used to," laughs Harvey. "None of us will be able to see anybody's facial expressions. Steve says a lot of things tongue in cheek, and if we can't see his face we'll not be able to tell if he's being sarcastic...

"We're just going to have to find ways of bringing the action to the fans in the best way we can."