Why the time is right for Hill's GT adventure after emotional BTCC finale

Jake Hill choked up. He could not speak. The enormity that he was about to start his final race in the British Touring Car Championship had hit him.

This wasn’t as he left the comfort of his supportive family to strap himself into his West Surrey Racing-run ‘Laser Beemer’ for one last time. It wasn’t as he spoke to his mechanics on the grid, or over the radio to his long-time engineer and good pal Craig Porley. It was when the BTCC’s effervescent Master of Ceremonies Alan Hyde, all cheery bonhomie as ever, thrust his trackside commentary microphone into the BMW 330i M Sport for a final interview on the grid.

It's not just the teams for which he has driven that have been a big part of 2024 champion Hill’s life since he embarked upon his BTCC journey in 2013, it’s what you might call the peripheral characters who all play a role in enabling the series to reach its status as popular entertainment.

“They have mate,” Hill reflects in the WSR truck, drenched with champagne from the third-place podium finish upon which he bowed out. “‘Hydey’ has interviewed me since I started in 2008 in Ginetta Juniors. I don’t know what it was – I just broke down a little bit when I saw him. Certain people have certain effects on you I guess.

“Him and Louise [Goodman, Hyde’s fellow gridwalker for ITV], they’re two, I think you’d agree, fantastic people in this paddock, who just have the kindest hearts. It’s knowing I’ll miss people like them that makes you sad. I’ll miss talking to you, and Matt James [the grizzled Jeff-Lynne-from-ELO lookalike from Motorsport News].”

The key to Hill arriving at this point is an FIA tweak to the driver categorisation rules for endurance racing. Before the Kentishman’s 2024 crown, the last driver to win a BTCC title for the first time was Tom Ingram in 2022, at which point the governing body was still awarding gold status to all national touring car champions. That ruling changed before 2024 and Hill, as a silver-graded driver, is of great value to a team wishing to place a so-called ‘super-silver’ alongside the pros.

Jake Hill is switching to international GT racing next year

Photo by: JEP

It doesn’t hurt that he has impressed this season with his parallel programme in the Creventic-run 24 Hour Series at the wheel of Era Motorsport’s Ferrari 296 GT3. Hill has done a lot of work with Era in recent years, primarily in historic machinery, and the word is that one potential avenue for 2026 is a campaign in a higher-level European series with the Ferrari, plus some races in the IMSA SportsCar Championship with the operation’s LMP2 team. This, it is understood, is not Hill’s only option. And what happens when the LMGT3 teams from the World Endurance Championship cotton on to the 31-year-old’s silver status?

“I’ve always had this itch to do other stuff,” explains Hill, who is also departing the MB management stable of Mark Blundell, which provided the commercial platform to establish himself as a BTCC top-liner. “I always saw myself at some point trying to do Le Mans, Daytona, Nurburgring 24 Hours – all these cool, exciting races abroad. I just feel that now is the right time. I’ve got an incredible opportunity to go and do some of those races, and just try and explore a little bit abroad. By all means this isn’t forever with the BTCC. I do genuinely hope I get to come back and have another go at some point, but I will never forgive myself if I don’t go and try.”

It's going to be a wrench though. “I’ve been in this paddock one way and another now for the best part of 20 years,” Hill sighs. “Which is a long time considering I’m 31! I came into this paddock properly at the age of 11 when I was a tyre-picker-upper, wheel-cleaner and car-cleaner for Redline Racing in the Carrera Cup. I was there for a couple of years and enjoyed my time thoroughly, and ultimately it was through meeting people in that paddock that gave me my first budget to go racing in Ginetta Juniors. From then on, it’s been an absolute whirlwind and somewhere that I will always call home. I’m going to miss it terribly.”

“I’ve got to be a little bit careful about how I play it, because I either need to make a massive impact in my first year and accept that if I get moved to gold I’m still going to have a seat, because that is the issue" Jake Hill

So, Hill is convinced that he will be racing in endurance in 2026, even if an actual deal is not yet finalised: “Obviously I have a very good idea, otherwise I wouldn’t have committed to leaving the BTCC in order to pursue that sort of dream. There’s some fantastic opportunities both in the States and in Europe, and all will be revealed very soon.”

But the looming obstacle is that a driver of Hill’s calibre can only remain silver for so long. It likely depends on the programme - or programmes - he embarks upon, but does he keep his powder dry and perform to 95% of his ability? Or does he go all-out and hope that he will remain attractive to teams as the gold standard he would surely become?

“I’ve got to be a little bit careful about how I play it, because I either need to make a massive impact in my first year and accept that if I get moved to gold I’m still going to have a seat, because that is the issue,” he considers. “Once you’re gold it is very difficult to maintain your seat unless you’re known as a very good driver. I’ve got to be very smart about how I do this and hopefully we can make it last more than two or three years. But there’s no telling at the moment. For now we’ve just got to go and do it, and see how we get on.”

The FIA Driver Grading system plays a big part in GT racing and deciding who is eligible for which line-up

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

One guy who will - or maybe we should say ‘may’ - miss him is Porley, who has worked with Hill for six years: 2020 with the AmD-run Honda Civic Type R; 2021 with the Motorbase Ford Focus; and 2022 onwards with WSR. But Porley’s initial background in the sport is in endurance. “He came and engineered for me and for Era in Abu Dhabi, with the Ferrari at the end of January,” adds Hill. “He did a great job, and I’m sure if the opportunity arose for him to come back he would, I think, happily take it. And I would obviously love to work with him. He’s not just a great mate but he is a fantastic engineer. You forget he was the head data engineer for the Nissan GTR GT1 programme back in the day, and many other GT programmes before he joined touring cars.”

Hill’s final weekend - for now - in the BTCC exhibited him as the well-rounded top-liner he has become. All those years up to the early 2020s battling in uncompetitive machinery had made him a popular underdog. And, when he did get into a position to run at the front, there was a period when he was still overreaching rather than playing the long game. He had well and truly banished that by the time he embarked upon his victorious 2024 season.

At Brands last weekend, he used an older set of soft tyres in the Q3 shootout to give himself a better shot on Sunday, and therefore qualified sixth: “Why don’t we not use our race tyres, unlike everyone else, and save them for when it matters? We probably have the best softs on the grid in terms of their usage.”

That plan was foiled in the opening race when a rub with Adam Morgan on the opening lap ripped a valve out of his left-front medium tyre. After a pitstop, he finished 19th, then came through to win a fantastic battle for seventh with Josh Cook in the second race. On the soft tyres for race three, Hill played it safe with passing team-mate Aiden Moffat. By the time he got through, the leading duo of Cook and Ash Sutton were too far ahead. If only his BTCC career had gone on for another few laps… “I was coming as fast as I could. I was throwing the world at it to have any sort of chance to get something good out of it.

“Unfortunately I just got a bit boxed with Aiden. I didn’t want to fire him off, I didn’t want him to lose out. I was being kind when overtaking him but I needed to get it done - it was a really tricky situation. They got a bit too far in front and I couldn’t get back to them. It’s a bit of a shame because I’d have liked to have won my last one, but a podium’s still great. I’ve finished on a high mate, and that’s all I could ask.”

Hill’s departure leaves WSR entering a winter unsure of who its team leader will be in 2026, just eight months after commercial realities meant its four-time champion Colin Turkington had to vacate the cockpit.

Hill scored a podium in the BTCC 2025 finale at Brands Hatch

Photo by: JEP

It’s fair to say that Daryl DeLeon and Charles Rainford, who fought a titanic battle for the Jack Sears Trophy sub-class, have been breakout stars of 2025. DeLeon, who ultimately prevailed on a dramatic final day, has one eye on sportscars and is in the shootout for the Porsche GB Carrera Cup scholarship; Rainford definitely wants to stay with WSR – if the parties can make the financial numbers add up.

“That is the plan, but you know what it’s like - early days,” says team boss Dick Bennetts. “It’s down to sponsorship. Daryl and Charles both are ‘rookies’ doing a great job. It’s that time of the year negotiating with sponsors etc.

“We’ve been good the second half of this year, but we started the year badly. Other teams had done more development than we did, but now we’ve caught up with them. We’ve spent a lot of money in the second half of the year, but now we need to do more development through the winter to start next year where we would like to be.”

"We will miss him because not only is he a quick driver, he’s a nice guy. He’s been great to work with" Dick Bennetts

Any chance of a Turkington return? “Yes, if we can find the right sponsor to get Colin back on board. Bobby Thompson’s still in the running if we can find the right budget - he really impressed us at Snetterton last year. It might be hard to find somebody like Jake, but there’s hopefully someone out there. Daryl and Charles have got the potential but they haven’t got that depth of experience yet. And Aiden’s really enjoying it now – what I like about him is he says ‘my fault’, and kicks himself for making a mistake.”

Whatever the line-up, the exit of the diminutive Hill leaves a hole at WSR considerably larger than his physical stature. “We will miss him because not only is he a quick driver, he’s a nice guy,” agrees Bennetts. “He’s been great to work with.”

We’ll all miss him. But you can bet that we’ll all be proud of him.