Why the BTCC is so hard for F1 converts to conquer

Failure to finish race three at Thruxton marked the end of a trying weekend for British Touring Car Championship rookie Mark Blundell. After a tangle with Tom Chilton during qualifying - which left Chilton saying that the ex-Formula 1 driver should consider his place in the series - 27th in the opening race was as good as the rest of the meeting got.

Three times Blundell stood on the podium at the end of an F1 grand prix, and in 1992 he won the Le Mans 24 Hours. That kind of kudos has brought with it plenty of public and media pressure for the oldest driver on the BTCC grid to impress. But, judging by history, the intense level of scrutiny seems unfair.

Blundell, 53, is not the only F1 alumnus to be attracted to the BTCC. Most recently, Martin Donnelly helped Infiniti make its shortlived debut in the series in 2015. Before that, Johnny Herbert was signed by Team Dynamics to see out the 2009 season in the Honda Civic. And, most famously of all, the feature race at Donington Park in 1998, when 1992 F1 and '93 IndyCar champion Nigel Mansell rose from last to fifth, is still regarded by many as the greatest race in BTCC history.

Like Mansell and Herbert, Blundell has so far competed in three championship rounds (Mansell's 1993 TOCA Shootout appearance was a non-championship event). Unlike his forerunners, Blundell is expected to complete a full season in his AMD Tuning Audi S3.

He's brought in blue-chip sponsor and software giant HP to back his campaign, so he isn't depriving a young charger of a spot on the grid, and together they have the capital to see it through to the close of the year should they wish.

"Like Mark is finding, the BTCC is just so different to what we're used to," says three-time F1 race winner and 1991 Le Mans victor Herbert. "I always remember Jason Plato telling me years ago that [BTCC cars] are awful things to drive. They're horrible, they're under-powered, they don't handle in the normal way.

"I think you have to have a particular background that enables you to adapt to it in an easier fashion. Front-wheel drive is just the opposite of a single-seater, which is why Mark is having these issues.

"Yes, he is a bit older, but it's not so much the age, more the technique. The guys doing it in British Touring Cars are top of the crop. I struggled a lot with it and didn't really get my head around it at all."

As Herbert says, both he and Blundell had to adapt to a front-powered tin-top. Originally Blundell had sounded out a seat with WSR to run a rear-wheel-drive BMW, but the signing of Tom Oliphant meant the team couldn't accommodate another car.

And unlike Herbert, who entered the BTCC off the back of winning the 2008 Speedcar Series crown, Blundell didn't come into the championship race-sharp. His last major campaign was a run in British GT back in 2013.

Despite Blundell's wealth of experience, it shouldn't be overlooked that he's on a steep learning curve in a field where the top 20 cars can be covered by less than a second over a lap.

"There's probably three or four drivers out of their depth. They're so busy hanging on for grim death" Dick Bennetts

As WSR team boss Dick Bennetts, who presided over Mansell's run in the BTCC, says: "Now the cars are more similar to each other so the championship is much closer. For Mark to come in now is difficult as well, and to jump into front-wheel drive. He wanted to run with us in a rear-wheel-drive car, but I told him we'd got our three drivers pretty much agreed already.

"I like Mark as a person, and he's brave to do the BTCC. He's determined to give it a go. But the trouble is if you're back far down the grid, there's a few numpties. There's more cars on the grid now so the level of talent is wider.

"Before, in the Super Touring days, they were all professional drivers bar one or two. The depth of the quality of drivers now, there's probably three or four drivers out of their depth. They're so busy hanging on for grim death. As a driver, you should be relaxed. In the BTCC, with cars in front, behind, alongside you, you have to be aware of what's going on."

Given how tight the pack can be, that puts Blundell on the back foot. With limited testing ahead of the season, much of his learning has to be done in the heat of battle. With so many cars fighting over the same patch of asphalt, progress up the order is hard.

Before his BTCC campaign, Blundell said all the right things. He's not set himself heady targets, instead he's scratching a long-held itch to compete in the flagship British series. That was the same ethos Herbert had when he replaced World Touring Car Championship-bound James Thompson.

"I didn't feel there was any pressure at all. I'd gone through my pressure era in F1, and sportscars with Audi and Bentley at Le Mans," adds Herbert.

"It was just completely alien to anything I'd done before, so there were no particular expectations on my part. You always have a performance level that you feel would be acceptable in your head, but when that's not achievable the fun sort of goes out of the window."

Herbert went on to score points in his second race at Silverstone, and then in races two and three at Rockingham. But that was accompanied by four retirements from the nine races he contested.

Former Lotus F1 driver Donnelly (pictured above) appeared in just the one round at Thruxton, which was the last meeting before Infiniti withdrew its factory backing from the fledgling Q50 project. He brought the car home in 20th, 19th and retired from the finale.

Of the recent F1 drivers to have a turn in the BTCC, it's Mansell who hogs the limelight. But there's a valid case to be made that his standout performance at Donington was more than just a little bit fortuitous.

He qualified only 19th in the feature race shootout, and suffered a sizeable shunt in the opening sprint contest when he locked his brakes and speared into the tyre wall at Coppice. His WSR team raced against the clock to repair the car, but he had to start from last place.

A meteoric rise through the order was helped by heavy rain - which masked the Ford Mondeo's performance deficit - a well-timed safety car and a lightning-fast pitstop from the team, aided by trick magnetic wheel-gun sockets brought in from the US.

As the Autosport report commented at the time, these were "artificial circumstances". Nevertheless that took Mansell, incredibly, up to first. But he overworked the tyres and dropped back to fourth, before a 1.8-second penalty for passing under the safety car relegated him to fifth.

John Cleland, 1995 BTCC champion, added: "What [Mansell] did on Sunday was typical of someone that doesn't know anything about front-wheel drive. He made nearly every mistake that a new competitor makes. But to be fair you'd expect that."

The headline result was fantastic and it rightly garnered huge attention from the national press, but that means it's been remembered generously over the years. In his next outing at Brands Hatch, Mansell went off on the first lap of the sprint race and collected Mark Lemmer. In the second encounter, he stopped early after a puncture and was handed a drivethrough penalty for pitlane speeding. That dropped him a lap down, where he collided with the Honda Accord of Peter Kox.

During Mansell's final outing at Silverstone, he didn't fair favourably against the pace of his team-mate Will Hoy in the dry - Hoy was, after all, the 1991 champion - and netted a 14th and an 11th place finish.

So for all the attention that's been directed at Blundell, his performances are remarkably similar to Herbert's and Mansell's over the course of the same three-round timespan (albeit in 1998 there were only two races per meeting). There needn't be a monkey on his back, as his F1 counterparts were in the same ballpark.

"Every single one is trying to intimidate the other and that's part of the game" Johnny Herbert

The focus should instead turn to where Blundell can go from here. His prime obstacle is Jake Hill, Blundell's young and fast team-mate. A strategy call to run with slick tyres in the first, fog-delayed race of the 2019 season at Brands merited Hill an excellent second place, and he's scored three more top 10 finishes so far this season.

Then there's the camaraderie, or rather lack of it, from his fellow competitors. After Mansell had his wing mirrors clipped in qualifying at Donington by Cleland, he complained that his rivals were out to get him. And, up to a point, who can blame them?

"He probably got a few more biffs than he deserved," says Bennetts, pictured below. "They were showing him who was in charge."

Herbert found that out too in the finale at Brands, where he lined up on the partially reversed grid in second spot. A podium finish was on the cards, but while running in fourth he was knocked out of the race by Plato.

He recalls: "I didn't expect to get open arms and 'we love you, and we won't touch you'. They're racing drivers, they don't do things like that. It's all about putting them in a better position. Every single one is trying to intimidate the other and that's part of the game."

If nothing else, tagging a big name from the world of F1 is good publicity. Lemmer's sponsors revelled in the Vauxhall Vectra's contact with Mansell when they collected one another at Graham Hill Bend.

But should Blundell overcome those hurdles, Bennetts isn't betting against him if he can find himself in a similar position to Herbert come race three.

"With the BTCC reversing the top 12, if he could finish race two in 10th or 11th and draw out that he's on the front row, then he's got the ability, I believe, to win," he predicts. "You're away from the numpties so you can focus on the driving and get your head down."

That's undeniably a tall order for Blundell. But the point is that he shouldn't be judged in isolation just because he's a well-known motorsport figure. There haven't been the headline results yet, but his part-time predecessors Mansell, Herbert and Donnelly didn't set the BTCC world alight either.

"It's always a challenge, and there are occasions when a challenge shouldn't be taken up," says Herbert. "It's a very hard thing to break into late [in your career] if you've never really been involved with it.

"For us single-seater drivers, it's not second nature at all. It's something you have to completely relearn and you can't do that in a short space of time. It's a very hard thing to adapt to. This is another level and they're very different cars."

With seven rounds of the season to go, there's time for Blundell to develop and move forward. Only then can he be judged and compared to more longstanding grand prix stars in the BTCC such as Derek Warwick and Gabriele Tarquini.

The BTCC might not be the purest form of motorsport thanks to its use of success ballast and semi-reversed grids, but that takes nothing away from the challenge of adapting to its unique demands.