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It’s been a long seven week mid-season break, but the British Touring Car Championship roars back into action this weekend at the Snetterton circuit in Norfolk for rounds 16, 17 and 18 of the 2009 series:



Croft was all about Colin Turkington as he won two of the three races and stormed into a significant championship lead. Fabrizio Giovanardi triumphed in the last race of the day in North Yorkshire and closed the gap right up on teammate Matt Neal for 2nd in the standings. The other big mover last time out was Turkington's RAC teammate Stephen Jelley who recorded three podiums to jump from 11th to 7th overall.

1.  Colin Turkington     149
2.  Matt Neal            124  
3.  Fabrizio Giovanardi  120
4.  Jason Plato          113
5.  Rob Collard           98
6.  James Thompson        89
7.  Stephen Jelley        69
8.  Andrew Jordan         63
9.  Adam Jones            54
10. Jonathan Adam         47
11. Mat Jackson           41
12. Harry Vaulkhard       18
13. Paul O'Neill          16
14. Gordon Shedden        11
15. Dan Eaves             10
16. Tom Chilton            3
17. David Pinkney          3
18. Martyn Bell            2
19. Alan Morrison          2
20. James Nash             0
21. John George            0
22. Martin Johnson         0
23. Liam McMillan          0
24. Nick Leason            0

Sunday timetable
09.00 Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain
09.40 Formula Renault UK with Michelin
10.20 Ginetta Junior Championship
11.00 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship
11.40 ELF Renault Clio Cup
13.25 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship
14.05 Ginetta G50 Cup
14.45 Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain
15.25 Formula Renault UK with Michelin
16.05 Ginetta Junior Championship
16.45 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship
17.25 Heritage Grand Touring Car Challenge

TV coverage
ITV4 @ 1100-1800, Sunday 2 August (Live BTCC & Supports)
ITV1 @ 0100-0215, Tuesday 4 August (BTCC highlights)
ITV4 @ 1530-1700, Tuesday 4 August (BTCC highlights)
ITV4 @ 1530-1700, Saturday 8 August (BTCC highlights)

Further highlight repeats on Men & Motors. Check schedules for these.

Weather forecast
Saturday: Light Rain, Temperature 19°C, chance of rain 60%
Sunday: Cloudy, Temperature 21°C, chance of rain 10%
http://uk.weather.com

Things to note - 12 races on Sunday and ITV4's coverage is on for SEVEN hours.

It's gradually getting closer and closer to the days of Motors...

Guess the 1st BTCC race will be shown delayed, looks like there's a lunch break so they should be able to catch up to live coverage. Be interesting to see what they show after the final touring car race, they've never shown the final support race before

Wooooh, got this off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully one day they'll show the whole meeting like Motors TV did.

Gah! It's really been seven weeks?

Why? BTCC Race 1 starts at 11am, ITV coverage starts at 11am. They'll just delay the race until 11:10am so ITV can go have a look in Martin Johnson's mum's holiday home in France or something else equally pointless.

Every time I post the official timetables in these threads, they just ignore it and move the first BTCC race around for TV reasons. I don't know why they don't just factor it into the official timetables.

Ahh, finally the break's over.

I expect Plato and Jackson to be very quick, the Chevy really suits this kind of track.

Jackson should be quick this weekend. Apparently he lost close to a stone after contracting gastroenteritis at the last round (it was the reason he crashed out in race 1 and didn't compete in either of the following races).

Yay finally the break is over

Really looking forward to this. Get myself some munches and just plant myself in front of the TV for 7 hours.

wooh.

Great to have BTCC back.

Wow. Was a scary incident too. He must've shit himself. Oh wait, yeah he probably did......



Well then, you should've been more active in WW2 and turned all your spare fields into airstrips. Then once the war was over you'd have lovely large tarmaced spaces suitible for not much else but racing some cars around

I wouldn't hold out much hope of seeing the Heritige Grand Tourers despite the schedule. It'll be all BTCC post race reactions with the sounds of excellent old machines in the background *sigh*

Interesting there's such a small gap between BTCC Race 1 and 2 (Lunch break aside...). It means anyone who has any mechanicals/accidents in race one is in serious danger of not making race 2 so I expect an extra air of caution this weekend.

Snetterton though, awesome track. Though I'm tired of hearing about the "longest straight in Great Britain! (They only get that record because Thruxton's full throttle bits have kinks in them! I'd wager you were on the power there for a lot longer than you are on the straight at Snet... )
Weather report, for this weekend anyone? Over/under on amount of cars in the cornfield at turn 1?
I'll go conservative and say just 2 over the day.

Shedden replaces Eaves

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/77412

Which is kind of for Shedden but damn as Eaves had such bad luck

Sucks for Eaves

So all the good drivers (Eaves, ToC) are off the grid but all the guys that suck and have money (won't mention names) can tootle about at the back. it sucks we need a new team for ToC and Eaves but we have VX pulling out

That is a shame, I like Dan. But good news for Shedden.

Yeah it's a shame, but out of the three (Shedden, Onslow-Cole, Eaves), I think Shedden is the best, and I'm glad he's back.

Good news to have Super-Sheds back! Sucks for Eaves having finally got back into the BTCC though.

No Martyn Bell because he injured himself on holiday.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/77415