Fabulous Fabrizio

On the face of it, 2008 was a classic season for the British Touring Car Championship. Nine different race winners across four different manufacturers, more wet races than almost any season in recent history, and a plethora of young talent forcing its way to the front.

Yet there was one constant factor throughout. From the first round onwards, Fabrizio Giovanardi held the number-one spot in the championship, and even as early as the third round of the series, at Donington Park in May, it seemed inevitable that the BTCC champions' trophy would remain on a certain Modena mantlepiece for another 12 months.

The key to Giovanardi becoming Vauxhall's first back-to-back drivers' champion, and the first foreign driver to achieve the feat since Frank Gardner four decades ago, was the incredible consistency of both the 41-year-old and his bullet-proof Vectra VXR - the Italian arrived at Brands Hatch for the final round of the season off the back of 39 consecutive points finishes, stretching back to the middle of 2007.

Ironic, therefore, that this phenomenon seemed to desert him at the season finale, and that he was handed the title in strange circumstances.

"We had to keep focused all through the season," he says. "If you look at the points from all the rounds, they were the same pretty much all season [between 23 and 33 points came his way at each of the first nine of the 10 rounds]. We always knew we had to keep scoring, because you never know what might happen."

And then it did happen. At the Brands Hatch showdown Giovanardi scored just one point, due to engine problems in race one. This forced a change to a new motor, which meant he missed race two altogether. But with main rival Jason Plato failing to gain the necessary score he needed to snatch overall victory, the Italian was crowned champion before lunch on the final day.

Series champion Fabrizio Giovanardi, Vauxhall © LAT

Winning the title in such fashion left Giovanardi with some strange feelings. Sure, he had done the hard work over the course of the season. He'd racked up the points early on while expected title rival Plato suffered as the SEAT squad struggled to unlock the potential of its Leon TDI. But there had to be a better way to win it, to wrap things up, than this...

"It's strange. I felt nothing really," says the Italian. "It came so unnaturally. Last year was so much more exciting because it came right down to the end between me and Jason. The weekend this year was really strange feelings for everyone.

"We were scared during the first race. I was scared because I could do nothing. I was in trouble with the engine. Seeing Plato come up and up, I thought if he finished fourth and can maybe pass in the last two laps then he can still win the championship. Then the championship was closed after the first race."

But, of course, it was Fabrizio's stacking up of the points during the season that had put him in a position whereby he could effectively cruise and collect in Kent. And boy, did he stack them up!

He set the wheels in motion at the very first round of the season, also held on the Indy layout at Brands, with two accomplished victories - one from the front, and one after a deliciously opportunist manoeuvre on long-time leader Mat Jackson at the entrance to Clearways, just as light rain began spitting onto the track surface and made the rear-wheel-drive BMW instantly less stable than the front-wheel-drive Vectra.

"Brands Hatch Indy is a BMW circuit," adds Giovanardi. "You saw at the last round that nobody could beat them. The rear-wheel-drive car just works much better round there. Jackson, [Colin] Turkington, Motorbase, even [Stephen] Jelley were very fast. But at the start of the year we beat them two times. The reason was that they were not ready and we were.

"After Jason was so close last year, we knew we had to work hard over the winter. And we made a big jump in performance just like we needed to. I think we were at the top of our performance earlier than anyone else.

"The reason we had to make as many points as possible early was because we could not gain a lot [on pace] over the season: we were already there - near our maximum - right from the start. I felt over the winter that there would be more cars with a chance to win than last year. We needed to win when the BMWs, the Hondas and the SEATs were still not at 100 per cent - especially the SEATs. You could see in the WTCC they were very fast with the diesel, so they were going to be probably the fastest when they reached their maximum."

VX Racing teammates Matt Neal, Fabrizio Giovanardi, and Tom Onslow-Cole © LAT

Giovanardi and new teammates Matt Neal and Tom Onslow-Cole guided their Triple Eight Engineering-run Vectras to seven wins in the first half of the season. Giovanardi left Croft in June with a 23-point advantage over Neal and double that over Plato, so damage limitation over the increasingly-quick SEATs during the second half of the season became the name of the game.

Nowhere was this more apparent than at Snetterton, a track at which the resurgent SEAT squad benefited more from the straightline-speed advantage afforded by its turbodiesel engines than anywhere else. Seventh in race one (carrying 45kg of success ballast) was all he could manage, while Plato won. In race two though, with a ballast-free car, the charge was on.

"That was the plan - to finish on the podium in the second race. Then I had the contact with Mr Sonic [Tom Chilton] on the first lap. I was down to 16th and then up to third. It's my style. It's the only moment I had trouble. It was not the way the season went, so I had to do something magic to avoid losing points. People say that was a key race, but I don't really think so."

During this season and last it was Plato who pushed Giovanardi harder than anyone else. So what does the champion think of his fellow forty-something?

"I really like Jason as a driver. It's a shame that SEAT have gone, but I really hope Jason stays in the BTCC. It's much better for me if he does."

Really? But surely the presence of such a prodigious talent as Plato's would only make life more difficult for the former Italian, Spanish and European champion...

"Let me tell you something," Fabrizio says. "In my life, at home in Italy, with my friends and my family, I like things to be easy. On the racetrack I like a battle. When I won the ETCC with Alfa Romeo it was very boring. You drive a car at the front all the time and it doesn't tick the box. It's why I couldn't drive in the Le Mans 24 Hours. I would fall asleep in the car in the middle of the night if I was a lap ahead of the next car and two laps behind one. I need someone to fight with. It's not enough to be just fast, they have to have something more. Jason has that. He's a fighter. At the end of the day, I need him here."

Whether or not Plato is here to challenge for championship honours next year remains to be seen, but Giovanardi certainly will be - he signed a two-year deal with Vauxhall at the start of 2008.

And he couldn't be happier about it. Well, maybe he could be a little bit...

"The weather. That's the one thing I'd change [as he says this the heavens open outside]. Apart from that I love racing in Britain. The circuits are exciting and Triple Eight are a very good team that give me the chance to win a lot."

And after this season? "I haven't really thought about it after 2009," he says. "Depends what's going on in the future. For sure, if I stay in Britain then I have to be with a team that I can win with. Sometimes, though, I just need to feel something new, something different. That's why I left Alfa Romeo and came to race in the BTCC. I think I will feel that way again at some point, and when it does I will do something else. Not now though. BTCC is too much fun."

And with that, BTCC fans will breathe a sigh of relief, for Giovanardi's presence brings the glamour of an international star to our shores. And it's a lot of fun having him here too.

The SEATs of Jason Plato and Darren Turner lead at Snetterton © LAT

Where did it all go wrong for SEAT?

SEAT's decision to enter a pair of diesel-powered Leons in the BTCC this year caused as many problems as the Spanish make believed it would solve.

After the straightline-speed advantage shown during the TDI's maiden half-season in the world championship, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Jason Plato and Darren Turner would be title contenders.

Plato was, mathematically anyway, but both drivers' hopes suffered hugely as a result of pre-season testing with the turbodiesel being limited to just two hours at Rockingham and the same amount at Brands Hatch.

"We lost the title before the season even started by not doing enough testing," said Plato at Oulton Park, the meeting at which he publicly conceded the championship to Giovanardi, despite still having a clear mathematical chance of taking it.

"The main problem was that the weight distribution was different from the petrol car," continued Plato. "There was a lot more weight over the front wheels, and that did things to the tyre wear so the car never really handled like it should have."

So that was the main problem, but Plato lost yet more ground to a disqualification at Thruxton after his car failed a post-race ride-height check, which he said was due to a suspension strut being bent in contact with Giovanardi.

The season did take a turn for the better after a two-day breakthrough test at Snetterton during the six-week summer break. This turned the Leons into the quickest cars in the series - and not just where you expect them to be, on the power circuits.

Four consecutive front-row lock-outs and seven wins for Plato, dutifully assisted by Turner, who rode shotgun on numerous occasions, should have been enough to bring the 2001 champion back into title contention this season.

But it was not to be. An electrical misfire at Snetterton cost him the chance of a treble win, and a similar failure two weeks later at Oulton Park lost him a surefire 15 points. Then there were the set-up mysteries that robbed him of another two wins at Silverstone when "the car simply stopped gripping".

As for Turner, the man who has the best qualifying average of any BTCC racer over the past two years, he only managed wins at Donington and Knockhill, and spent the year suffering from almost as many mechanical problems as Plato.

SEAT's decision to withdraw from the BTCC and UK motorsport as a whole currently leaves both Plato and Turner without drives for 2009. Whether either will be back or not is unknown at this stage. One thing is for sure though - the series would be a poorer place without them.