Why the contentious regulations were a talking point again in BTCC's visit to Thruxton

Tom Ingram hit the nail on the head in his summary of his British Touring Car Championship adventures at Thruxton. “We’ve been noisy this weekend, which we didn’t really want to be,” sighed the reigning champion. “It’s been a fairly trying weekend.”  

That was after race three, which he won in what looks like an increasingly forlorn attempt for the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai racer to prevent Ash Sutton storming to a fifth title. In that race, Ingram just about managed to overcome a five-second penalty for a starting infringement, thus continuing conversations surrounding the regulations this season.

But what was Ingram’s offence? Reversing on the grid, so that he wasn’t illegally too far forward in his grid box.

Really? What harm can this possibly have done? What advantage did he gain?

None, of course. But such are the regulations that plague motorsport. They don’t do the BTCC any good; they don’t do any good for other championships either. Luckily, in this case, Ingram’s pace meant it didn’t affect the result.

But before then there had already been an Ingram controversy in race two. In this case, he bypassed the chicane entirely during his battle with Josh Cook for second – just as he did with Sutton while fighting for the lead at the same venue last year.

Last season, Ingram effectively went unpunished, as did Adam Morgan and Colin Turkington in similar instances in previous years. This year, he was hit with a 10-second penalty for his accumulated track-limits offences, and this converted second place to fifth. 

The regulations are a big talking point in BTCC 2026

Photo by: JEP

It’s something that Thruxton has to sort out, because it’s a common occurrence - not just in the BTCC. In Ingram’s case last weekend, he claimed to have backed off in order to ‘give back’ the time gained, as drivers always do. But the fact remains that when this happens, a significant part of the circuit has been missed out.

Back in the 1970s, when this writer was first attending Thruxton as a kid, the chicane was lined with barriers. Reinstalling them would nip this problem in the bud, as well as the lesser offences of skipping the middle apex because you’ve decided that your too-bold move around the outside is going to lead to a potentially race-ending collision. But barriers would also, of course, lead to accidents, and no one wants more safety car tedium.

So why not dock drivers the lap on which they have transgressed, effectively leaving them a lap behind? Or an instant drive-through penalty? Then they’d try to keep it on the track… 

One thing Thruxton has got right is the new spectator banking that lines the outside of the circuit alongside Woodham Hill and up to the chicane entry

Mention of Cook in the Ingram incident brings us on to one of the more pleasurable aspects of the weekend. It was great to see one of the most underrated talents - and that’s partly because this utterly undemonstrative chap is never one to blow his own trumpet - of the BTCC performing so well in Speedworks Motorsport’s lead Toyota Corolla GR Sport.

OK, he entered the weekend handily placed in eighth in the championship, i.e. the top runner not to suffer any TOCA Turbo Boost handicap, but that’s partly because of ill fortune (and the occasional misjudgement) over prior weekends. Pole position, a qualifying race win, and victory in race one were all impressive. Perhaps even more so was his eventual third place in race two when he was down to just one lap of TTB. That was probably also a surprise to Cook, who beforehand had stated, “I think it would have been a very different story had I had the same [TTB] as them” about his performances earlier in the weekend.

The Corolla is getting quite long in the tooth now – this is its eighth BTCC season. But the switch back towards the end of last season from the failed experiment with bespoke Toyota engines to using the customer M-Sport-built TOCA powerplant is one reason why Speedworks is still having to hone its machinery. 

Thruxton was the BTCC's first race weekend after the summer break

Photo by: JEP

There had been no testing during the seven-week summer break, bar taking new recruit Ryan Bensley to Snetterton for a day to get his eye in.

“Development is relatively limited on what you can do on these cars,” reckoned Cook who, let’s not forget, is also probably the driver who best understands the engineering that is required. “We did a lot in the winter with the cooling package, the aero package. What it allowed us to do over the seven weeks off was actually analyse the data in much greater detail and spend a lot of time, rather than having to rush through to get a starting set-up for the next round.  

“A bit of time to think about it always helps – a bit of a break, a bit of a reset. I’m pleased with the direction we’re going with the car. It’s nice to drive. It can be a little bit hairy in the fast stuff, but that’s inherent with a short-wheelbase car. We’re by far the shortest wheelbase on the grid. Technically you’d never pick this wheelbase of car and this shape of car for this circuit, so that’s another little nod to the team of how good a job they’ve done.”

For Thruxton, you’d actually want the longest-wheelbase car on the grid: Plato Racing’s Mercedes A35 Saloons. OK, they didn’t get the headline-grabbing results that Cook did, but there did seem to be a nice step forward. Prior to Thruxton, the new-for-2026 team’s best result in a full-points Sunday race had been a fifth for Adam Morgan at Snetterton, followed by a whole basketful of sixths accumulated by both Morgan and Dan Rowbottom. In Hampshire, Rowbottom claimed third in the opener, and followed that up with fourth in race two.

Team chief Jason Plato had predicted that the car would be a force to be reckoned with around the high-speed sweepers of Thruxton, and the team had undergone two days of testing at Pembrey in order to try to rediscover the set-up mojo that had taken ‘Rowbo’ to his fairytale debut victory in the qualifying race at the Donington opener – one focus for the team being to work on a problem whereby its Mercs had been ‘overcooling’ their M-Sport engines.

But, when the cars hit the track in free practice, there was a highly visible problem. One thing Thruxton has got right is the new spectator banking that lines the outside of the circuit alongside Woodham Hill and up to the chicane entry. 

Plato Racing made a nice forward step at Thruxton

Photo by: JEP

Back to the Mercs. When Rowbottom and Morgan rode the kerb at the first chicane apex, their cars’ return to the asphalt resulted in Zebedee-style hopping at the rear end.

The Plato squad, armed with its knowledge from the Pembrey test, was effectively now having to adapt this to Thruxton. Rowbottom’s bouncing was worse than Morgan’s – he was running stiffer springs – but both were giving great entertainment to the spectators.

By the time Rowbottom posted those results, things had improved. “There have been big changes made to Dan’s car,” said Plato. “They’re now in a similar philosophy on set-up. Now we’re making changes to both to try to improve the damping. We’ve still not eliminated the hopping at the chicane and the Complex, but it’s better. It doesn’t settle as quickly over the bumps as it should do.”

Of course, the Plato team and its machinery are still in their relative infancy – they only hit the track just before the official pre-season tests. And you know old JP – there’d be nothing he’d like more than for his boys to be part of whatever Ingram, or Sutton, controversy blows up over the remainder of the season. 

Ingram trails Sutton by 59 points heading into Knockhill

Photo by: JEP