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Now that I've had time to catch breath...

It's been a brilliant season. The last few years I've only really dipped in and out of the BTCC - this has been the first year where I've followed it in depth for a while, probably since 2013. The standard of the championship is ridiculously high now - it's so much more competitive with the teams all being on a more level playing field. While it doesn't have the big international stars, and probably never will again, the young drivers that have come through over the last couple of years are clearly very good. And with Neal declining, Plato an irrelevance and Collard probably retiring, the improvements in driving standard are noticeable and that's a big positive - that last race demonstrates you can still have close, exciting racing without having cars driving into each other at every other corner

Turkington deserved the championship - he wasn't the fastest guy out there but he kept his nose clean and was consistently fast just about everywhere despite the deficiencies of the BMW. But the championship was pretty much over after Sutton and Ingram were disqualified at Knockhill - without that points swing, Ingram would have won the title. That said, the real drama wasn't really in the championship fight itself. I'd be surprised if that record of 17 winners is ever beaten - and there were probably a few more guys who had the potential to win races on their best days as well. I certainly don't think we'll see as many brand new winners again

It's a shame this season has come to an end - I could've watched another 30 races of that. For once I'm hoping for relative stability ahead of next year, rather than big changes, but this generational shift needs to continue. I know Plato's talking about coming back and I'm sure he'll be helped into a good team, but it's probably not for the best - the BTCC really needs to keep moving away from those last 90s/2000s guys

Ash Sutton is my favourite driver in anything

He makes all these brilliant moves and rarely, if ever, gets involved in the BTCC ruckus, that even turkington seems to descend into when the chips are down.

Hopefully he'll be a multiple champion in the future

Turkington? Meh. Great drive this year but I kinda got over him when he hoofed someone out the way to win in race 2 here last year and the BTCC did nothing, and has done a couple of similar moves this year

He's a star of today of course, but Sutton is the star of tomorrow, so I hope he somehow escape the malaise of Subaru and into a truly competitive team sooner rather than later.

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

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a smashing race to end the season. second race was pretty intense too

I haven't followed BTCC in about a decade now but Turkington wins the title after getting ONE win out of 30 races? Sheesh... that's borderline busch league stuff. Might as well go for 0 for 30 next season.

I see Jason Plato down in 27th in the standings with four points-scoring finishes. Man, it's time to go!

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

There's always someone who has to be negative, isn't there? It's hardly the first time a championship has been won on consistency.

Sunday was a good day out as usual. As far as atmosphere is concerned, the best race was the Clio finale. I had Rivett fans to the left, Zelos fans in front and loads of Coates fans to the right, all shouting and screaming. Great stuff!

The final BTCC race was an all-time classic. I wasn't sure who'd won at first.

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I really don't see a single positive thing about ANY series champion winning 1 out of 30. This kind of *consistency* used to ridiculed to death on TBK when it comes to NASCAR but in BTCC it's suddenly all fine and dandy? Meh...

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

Is it ridiculed? I thought the majority of people here hated systems like NASCAR's Chase, and would much rather the champion was the one who scored the most points over a season? If that's somebody who wins a load of races, or somebody who consistently scores good points whilst rivals make mistakes, it doesn't bother me at all.

And what a final lap. Not just the move from Sutton, but what fantastic respect from Cook. I was waiting for Cook to run wide out of the final corner and put Sutton onto the grass. A lot of drivers would have done that to take the win. So nice to see some clean side by side racing, and in the BTCC of all series!

You can't compare 3 hour NASCAR races with numerous cautions to a bunch of sprint races the BTCC provides. Sutton had more wins than all three guys that finished ahead of him combined. With reliability hardly an issue this is all a by-product of ballast weight that should be scraped from all touring car series in the world IMO. Ballast weight racing is equally as gimmicky as The Chase.

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

Subaru started off the year with engine issues, took some time to get them right before Sutton could get into the title fight. Nothing to do with ballast there.

Ingram also had more than his fair share of mechanical issues.

We're comparing the points system not the racing product. And not sure what your point with this statement is anyway, are you defending nascar having a playoff system because most of their races are a 3 hour borefest?


Maybe not in other motorsports but reliability is still a factor in BTCC. I don't think ballast is what caused all the different race winners this season but rather that the competition has gotten stronger.

Yeah, I get that the product can be exciting and that's the major reason for a BTCC hard-on but that's the same kind of attitude NASCAR shows in the Chase era. I've said this above, both weight ballast and the Chase are equally worthless. Ballast racing is the chief reason I stopped following literally every touring car series there is, it's endemic disease for me now. I didn't mind it as much in the 90s but I've grown to accept over the years that I absolutely HATE it.

I stopped watching NASCAR on streams after Keselowski's title season when the Chase began to wear me down to the point I couldn't take it any longer. And it ony got worse with the stages crap IMO. NASCAR's on Polish TV since last season so I gave it another shot but if I had to settle for online again, I'd never give it a second try.

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but it's safe to say you're in the minority on that one.

You seem to be arguing that BTCC is similar to NASCAR in relying on gimmicks and those gimmicks harming the racing product, but the two couldn't really be more different. BTCC has barely changed its format and competition controls in the past 25 years, and for the most part it's provided the best tintop racing in the world across that time. NASCAR has constantly fiddled with its rules package, race format and points system over the last 20 years in an effort to improve the entertainment value, and killed the appeal it once had as a result. NASCAR started down its path of self destruction as a response to the 2003 championship outcome, exactly what you're criticizing the BTCC for. If anything, the best argument you're making is that there are far worse things than a championship earned on consistency rather than race wins.

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I don't say BTCC isn't exciting for fans but I can't get over the ballast hump and never will. And it's not only NASCAR vs BTCC. DTM is the same for me, I was really looking to the series revival in the early 00s and then BMW joining as the third manufacturer. But the weight ballast rules even drove the paticipating manufacturers crazy so DTM had to scramble to kill off those ideas. Don't get me even started on WTCR with all the reverse grids and their ideas to improve the show.

I was a fan of Paul Radisich driving a Ford Mondeo (my favorite touring car back then) but those days are long, long gone not to return anymore

_________________
07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

Worth bearing in mind the ballast system in the BTCC was a response to two pretty one-sided seasons where one manufacturer had a massive advantage. It started out with the 4WD and RWD ballast in 1996 because the A4 Quattros were so dominant, and then after Renault dominated 1997, Gow decided to shake things up to prevent a manufacturer coming in and spending their way to the title. It basically had to happen, otherwise the BTCC would have gone even more out of control than it already did - it was bad enough a few years later when Vauxhall had a monopoly for four years

And that's equally as BS solution to a problem that The Chase is in NASCAR. I remember when Alfa Romeo dominated DTM then came to BTCC and spanked these guys too. Audi used to dominate in DTM before the series screwed them over a crankshaft to force the V8 quattro out of the sport. And the hell didn't freeze over. Someone is always bound to do a better job than others so all the ballast gimmicks, reverse grid and whatever to make the racing exciting might work for most of the fans but they sure don't work for me anymore. Not in the days of bulletproof reliability and when a series champion wins 1 race out of 30 during the season. That's random picking IMO given the sprint nature of these races. Even DTM does races that last 60 minutes, BTCC race lenght is what? 25 minutes? Hell, Moto3 has 16 year olds racing longer than this...

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

Yeah, you won't get any agreement in this thread

BTCC is one of the least broken and most goddamn fun championships in motorsport atm
Super touring, with its aerodynamics, spectacular cars but poor races (without post race editing) be damned, we're in a golden era of the sport right now.
If anything, Super Touring is overrated because the romance of that short-ish era prevents people from ever appreciating what's racing in front of them.
It goes from strength to strength with full grids despite the threat of TCR taking off around the world.
Racing is consistently exciting, TV coverage pretty damn extensive and I'm sorry, when you have 17 winners out of 30 races, people want to tell me that's a bad thing?
I'm sure 2012 F1 was a terrible season too with all that variety of winning drivers and teams, all that awful overtaking, pit strategy and drama.

Even when a Championship is rolling along nicely and putting on consistently good racing, people will still look for the negatives, I guess.

There are a few things I might want to change in the BTCC, but tbh I wouldn't dare touch anything atm.
It's so consistently good, I'd worry making even one little change would end up with a domino effect of changes that means the championship isn't as good any more

I'm paranoid for the day Alan Gow announces he's retiring, or ITV announce they're no longer covering it any more and it goes to pay TV, or teams start leaving for TCRUK....(Yeah, I'm paranoid a lot :P )

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Like I've said, it's not the 2018 BTCC season that made me quit on the touring car series around the world, it's happened a decade ago already. Renault Clio Cup was/is fun with all the mayhem everywhere you look. You watch that, have a good laugh and turn it off. I have higher standards for some of these allegedly best racing series in the world. BTCC is a sprint show with weight ballast and basically high school level. When you have 17 or whatever winners in a season that means everyone can win it. And that takes the achievement away. It's like winning on a superspeedway in NASCAR. They might sell Daytona 500 as the biggest race there is but winning the World 600 or Southern 500 is far more impressive IMO. It's not a golden era of touring cars for me by any means, if Sutton and Ingram are the new folks heroes because it's so much fun then I'll stick to the Cleland/Harvey days. I enjoyed that much better than what I've seen over the past decade or so when they keep coming with more gimmicks. Just make it a spec series because if you have 17 winners and bulletproof reliability the whole manufacturer concept doesn't make any sense. Put them in those Clios so I could have fun again too

_________________
07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

I would think the first one of those to go would be the live tv coverage, that deal is a legacy from when Gow was off doing other things worldwide and someone else was running the BTCC, and Gow has often said how he doesn't see the appeal of live tv coverage as it can detract attendance from the local market especially if the weather is questionable, well he said that a few years ago anyway, dunno if he's changed his mind.

Seems like pretty dodgy logic to me, surely the number of fans (trackside or otherwise) gained from live TV coverage makes the drop in attendance negligible. You're still left with a far bigger audience overall.

I'd love to know the viewing figures. In some ways, ITV4 covering most of the day live is a throwback to Grandstand showing all kinds of racing in the 80s, but then Grandstand was dropped by the BBC 11 years ago because of poor ratings - mainly because having more channels meant people were less likely to sit at home and watch the whole thing, especially if something came on they weren't as interested in, whereas in the past they didn't have much choice. However, there must be something in it for ITV because they picked up that package from Motors quite a few years ago now and they're still showing it

I suppose Gow's logic comes from the Super Touring era where they were able to produce a very neat highlights package that could be shown on Grandstand, with Murray doing a great job pretending he was commentating live and all the boring bits cut out (and evidently there were a lot of them, as fun as that era was - I can remember watching some of the live ST races and they were probably on a par with today's better F1 races). That was something that worked for British F3 too

But that doesn't work so well in an era of satellite/digital TV, let alone live streaming. It used to be a real novelty to see highlights of the DTM, FIA GT or F3000 on TV (on Top Gear Motorsport or International Motor Racing) - and given that it was so hard to get hold of results, you would be watching it as if it was live anyway. But it feels like the chase for live sport probably killed off the idea that you could have race highlights on one of the main TV channels at a reasonable time (rather than 23:35 or whatever). Having a highlights package for F2 on, say, ITV wouldn't work now because most people who are interested would have seen it live, or would at least know the result