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Dario Franchitti, the unnoticed sports personality

 

It's a crying shame Dario's achievements have been ignored by the media again. In part, you would have hoped they might have accidentally read a paragraph or two about what Dario has achieved in the United States whilst rushing together pieces on the disastrous Las Vegas IndyCar season finale, but they probably didn't want to accidentally talk too much about a series which they in fact know nothing about.

It's a remarkable irony that Britain is one of the most engaged countries when it comes to engineering skills and its involvement in running the top motorsport teams in a variety of different disciplines, whilst simultaneously having one of the most unengaged national media on the same subject.

This follows on from the weekend's announcement that Sky Sports has formed an entire channel just for its newly acquired coverage of Formula 1 next year, and early signs are that won't include anything else but Formula 1. Sky is certainly not blind to the fact that there are other motorsports. It airs the IndyCar Series live, it tried its hardest to get the UK interested in NASCAR two years ago, it runs highlights in the same week of the event of the British Rally Championship and has other wrap-up programmes too, yet it still felt it needs to treat Formula 1 fans separately from other general motorsport fans.

This is driven from the fact that unfortunately other motorsports do not get a look in from the UK's national media. IndyCar popped up after the Las Vegas race for what was solely coverage of Dan Wheldon's tragic death in the event, which was a matter of mention only for the respectable media, or a savage witch hunt by the usual hideous 'newspapers'. The only other notable appearance of IndyCar racing in the newspapers recently was for the previous year's Indianapolis 500, which was of course just to highlight Mike Conway's season ending accident, barely mentioning Dario Franchitti's second win in the event.

It's no wonder there's a general perception in the UK that IndyCar is just a dangerous sport, with no other insight beyond that from your average Joe.

The only other sport that had a reasonable profile in the UK is the FIA World Rally Championship. Rallying is a popular sport at a national level in the UK, but the '90s and early '00s heydey of British rally drivers Colin McRae and Richard Burns is long gone, and with Sébastien Loeb's eight year domination, and the sport migrating further and further down the EPG, it's been disappearing from the public consciousness at about the same rate.

So sadly, it isn't any surprise to see no representation from motorsport in this year's BBC Sports Personality of the Year, with the shortlist drawn up by the national media's nominations.

The Sun, which actually sponsors Chevrolet touring car drivers Jason Plato and Rob Huff didn't even nominate their men. Of course if they had, the cynical view would be it could have been a deceitful attempt to get sportsmen wearing their logos in the shortlist, whereas in fact the truth is they're probably the only newspaper really aware of Plato and Huff's achievements - and in all reality, if three time World Touring Car Champion Andy Priaulx can't get nominated, what chance did they have?

Jenson Button, a good year in a bad car just missed out by one vote on making the shortlist, whilst Dario Franchitti got one nod from Scottish newspaper The Herald, the same amount of nominations as Lewis Hamilton, who most certainly just had his worst year in the Championship.

People can get really mad about the absence of women in the shortlist if they want, but I think it's more than just that. The exclusion of true British sports heroes highlights the poor system that is being used to select the shortlist for this 'prestigious' award, relying on a body which are assumed to be qualified to produce an acceptable shortlist, when it seems quite likely that they are in fact not.

 

Giovanardi shines in Scandinavia

Former European and British Touring Car champion Fabrizio Giovanardi has had a very limited programme in motorsport this year. The 44-year-old Italian entered the FIA European Touring Car Cup in July with Danish touring car specialist team Hartmann Racing, and won the rain hit event with relative ease, taking pole position and victory in the first heat, and second place in race two against the newer SEAT León TDI of Pepe Oriola was enough to secure the title.

 However, even though it's an FIA title, the level of competition in the European Touring Car Cup this year meant Giovanardi winning that event was pretty much a foregone conclusion even before it started. Oriola would certainly be fast, but the 17-year-old Spaniard had the Super 2000 dominant turbo-diesel SEAT at his disposal. Giovanardi's main threat was set to come from the Chevrolet Cruze of ETC regular Michel Nykjaer, but that threat evaporated with technical problems beleaguering the Swedish Nika Racing team all weekend, reducing what would have been a good three car battle to just two, and in terms of experience, this was by far on Fabrizio's side.

 Now last weekend, Giovanardi made his first appearance in the Scandinavian (née Swedish) Touring Car Championship. Unlike the ETC Cup, no one was rushing to place bets on a win for the Italian here. The event had Danish drivers such as Jason Watt and Giovanardi's own team-mate for the event, Casper Elgaard, both of which had greater knowledge of the track.

 Also the teams and drivers in the STCC grid are amongst the top professionals in the world, with touring car greats such as Richard Göransson, Jan 'Flash' Nilsson, Colin Turkington, Tommy Rustad, Fredrik Ekblom - as well as Fabrizio's old N.Technology team-mate Gabriele Tarquini also on the grid at the weekend.

 Giovanardi was again with Hartmann Racing, so this means he's now got at least one race weekend's experience with the team behind him. Giovanardi had raced the Honda Accord once before, way back in 2006 at Macau with JAS Motorsport, which was actually his last appearance in the World Touring Car Championship.

 Although the Hartmann Racing team had the advantage of fresh tyres this weekend at Jyllandsringen for the single free practice session, to be second quickest in that session at a circuit where he's never raced at before, with a car which he's never driven in dry conditions this year underlined his talent.

 In qualifying, derailed by an engine misfire, Giovanardi qualified in 14th on the grid and would have it all do to on race day. In the short warm-up on Sunday he was sixth fastest and ready for the races ahead.

  Hartmann are only doing this round of the championship, so points weren't the aim, the goal is to win. With Tommy Rustad and Colin Turkington pulling out away at the front, that wasn't going to happen in race one, so lining up in the best position for race two was the optimum tactic. The STCC still reverses the top eight for the second race, so the target is to get that eighth. Avoiding the trouble ahead of him in race one, by the end of the first lap he's already 10th after Rydell, Tarquini and Olsson's coming together. He passes his team-mate Elgaard on lap two and then Jason Watt's SEAT on lap four. That's it, he's in eighth, and that's where he stays up to the chequered flag.

 With pole position for race two, Giovanardi makes it look easy. The Italian holds off top independent driver Mattias Andersson, whose MA:GP team fields an ex-N.Technology Alfa Romeo 156, the same car Fabrizio drove in 2005 on his way to third place in the World Touring Car Championship.

 So, on his second ever race in the STCC, Giovanardi's taken a win and jumps to 15th in the championship, already outscoring full-time Chevrolet driver Viktor Hallrup. Gio also has 27 more points than Tarquini, whom has done twice as many races now in the top-of-the-line Volvo C30.

  So what does this tell us? Well, simply any car Giovanardi gets, he excels and doesn't take long to get brilliant results. At Surfers Paradise last year Giovanardi was paired up at Britek with Karl Reindler at the time (and will be again this year). The Fair Dinkum Sheds Racing car is generally a consistent last third of the grid runner, but with Giovanardi on the team, things were different that weekend. In an odd race where every team wanted to get their international 'liability' out of the cars as quickly as possible, including IndyCar stars such as Scott Dixon, Helio Castroneves and Dario Franchitti no less - Giovanardi was left in the car for longer than any of the other guest drivers in the first heat, and it paid off with Giovanardi and Reindler taking the team's best result of the season with ninth. Though in the second race things didn't go quite so well when Giovanardi was taken out by Jacques Villeneuve, but hey, this is motorsport.

 Looking back at his BTCC career, Giovanardi adopted quickly in his first season in the championship in 2006, with a new team for him with Triple Eight and many new tracks to learn as well as a new car with the troublesome Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch. A new car built around him for 2007 with the Vauxhall Vectra saw the Italian take two consecutive titles. In 2009, he just missed out after a fantastic performance by West Surrey Racing and Colin Turkington to pip him to the title, with a hard charging Jason Plato and an RML Chevrolet Lacetti also right in the mix at the end of the season.

 In 2010, the rumours were that Giovanardi was all ready to sign a contract to return to the WTCC to race for Chevrolet in a four car effort, joining the team along with Yvan Muller as Chevrolet sought to ensure they won their first championship without fail. Unfortunately, SEAT's withdrawal and BMW's reduction to just two cars saw Chevrolet re-evaluate their plans. A four car squad would have been overkill (and expensive), though Eric Nève admitted to me he'd have liked to have more cars to ensure they could get that all important manufacturers title, with SEAT's strategy in recent years making sure they have enough cars to always score highly even if one, two or even three of their drivers are taken out.

 Without a drive, Giovanardi looked set to sit a year out. A last minute call from Triple Eight saw him turn up at the opening round at Thruxton with no preparation or testing, as the team were making the case to a US company for a title sponsorship deal to make up for Vauxhall's withdrawal. In Free Practice 1 he was in the top three behind the two works Hondas. In FP2, he was fastest of all, and went on to qualify on the front-row behind Gordon Shedden. In races one and two, he dominated, finishing seconds ahead of Jason Plato and Matt Neal respectively, then drove up to fifth from ninth on the grid in race three to leave the first meeting of 2010 with the lead of the championship and never to return after Triple Eight's sponsorship deal fell through, but certainly not on account of the results.

   Later in the year, he was called up by his old team N.Technology to race their new Porsche Panamera in three rounds of the growing Italian-based International Superstars Series. Giovanardi took pole position in every round he competed in, and won four out of the six races. Despite competing in less than a third of the season, he was classified in fifth in the International standings and sixth in the Italian championship, with more than half of the points of series champion Thomas Biagi. It's easy to work out from that what would have happened if he and N.Technology had run the full season.

Fabrizio's proficiency and skill easily place him among the top touring car drivers in the world. That he hasn't had a full time drive in two years does highlight the troubled state of touring car racing on a professional level at the moment. The championships can have full grids and close fighting, but that doesn't mean there's enough sponsorship or manufacturer support to allow the teams to hire the top drivers - because let's face it, if you're a team owner and you want to win races or championships, what's a driver like Giovanardi doing without a drive?

Are Chevrolet really boring us?

Nine wins from ten races. They're also certain to break the record for number of wins by one manufacturer in a year and then some.

It's utter domination, it's boring, it's unfair. So say some people anyway.

Is it really that unexpected? And should it really be forced to be closer than it is?

Chevrolet Motorsport Manager Eric Nève wants competition.

When I spoke to him near the end of last year, he didn't want (or expect) BMW to leave, but unfortunately they did. Their reasons were obvious, they want to be in DTM beating their true market rivals Mercedes-Benz and Audi. There was no benefit for BMW to be fighting with Chevrolet, all the benefits there were on Chevrolet's side.

Chevrolet were enjoying the fight with BMW, not least because they were winning it.

You could go on about weights and gearboxes which undermined the Championship a bit last year, but in the end how Chevrolet won was through more investment in their touring car programme than anyone else on the grid.

They'd signed arguably the best touring car racer on the planet, Yvan Muller. Chevrolet's chosen race team, RML, are also a bigger motorsport entity than the lone works operation BMW of Racing Bart Mampaey, with BMW pulling Schnitzer out to focus on the M3 GT2 car. Also, BMW's WTCC effort was down to two drivers from what had been five since the start of the Championship in 2005.

Chevrolet wanted to win in 2010. They knew they finally had a car that could do it with the one-year old Cruze. They just needed to ensure that they had the right drivers and resources to beat a subdued SEAT operation and the two BMWs of Andy Priaulx and Augusto Farfus.

If you believe the rumours (and you should), they were ready to throw even more at 2010, with Fabrizio Giovanardi planned for a fourth car.

So they threw money at it and were beating BMW on pace, with BMW's 320si car getting old (and it still is), and Priaulx was struggling to fight off Yvan Muller, Alain Menu and Rob Huff with just one car of Augusto Farfus in support.

Still, strategic driving saw Priaulx win more races in a single year than he had done on any of his three Championship winning years, but it wasn't enough. An ill-fated attempt to take advantage of a supposed regulation loophole also backfired and BMW found themselves disqualified and out of the Championship with one race to go, and BMW unsurprisingly left as a factory team. 

So this year, Chevrolet are dominating.

Why? Well, because they're still throwing money at it. Without knowing what SEAT or BMW would do for 2011, they were the first to develop the 1.6 litre turbocharged engine. They ran more miles with it than anyone and headed out to Brazil in March and took an easy pair of victories, whilst a number of independent BMWs turned up to fight them with relatively untested units, and SUNRED, now devoid of any support from SEAT came along with their old engines. 

As the season goes on, that competition closes in. The independent BMW teams are learning their car and getting more out of it, but there's no ongoing development budget as there is at Chevrolet.

The SUNRED team has put a new engine in their car, also a very old SEAT León, which was developed in 2005, and though the first signs are reliability is certainly an issue, there's good pace there. Also, with Tiago Monteiro and Gabriele Tarquini still at the team, they have a driver line-up that's perfectly capable of taking more victories. 

Then there's the dark horse, the quiet little Volvo team. One car with low expectations, a brand new engine and a well developed chassis from racing in the Swedish Touring Car Championship. The possibility to add a second car for former BTCC Champion James Thompson should also ensure the team is able to win races before the year is out, and hopefully carve the way for a fully competitive rival for Chevrolet next season.

But for 2011, Chevrolet will win the championship, in the same way Red Bull Racing would utterly dominate in Formula 1 if you took out Ferrari and McLaren. Expecting anything but Chevrolet domination this year in the World Touring Car Championship would be ludicrous. If the FIA did peg the Chevrolets back so the pack would catch them, as is done in some other championships, it would be moving too much 'sport' from motorsport and veering it too much towards motor-entertainment, which isn't fitting from an 'FIA' and 'World' class championship. 

The racing hasn't been bad either. The drivers aren't being made to follow each other around in the order they qualify, they're totally free to race each other as long as they don't take each other out, although Yvan Muller broke that rule a little bit at Monza. It's been a close season, with Rob Huff managing to pull out a bit of a lead, but one that could easily be wiped out with just one bad result.

Don't get angry with Chevrolet about it though, it's hardly their fault. They're the ones that actually stayed in the Championship.

Eric Nève is happy with the results and exposure of course, but he's certainly not happy with the lack of competition. He wants to be beating BMW and SEAT and Volvo and whoever else. More importantly, he wants to be managing the battle against teams down the pit lane, and not within his own team.

At the moment, he has to manage Menu, Muller and Huff - all three believe they have (and do have) the capability to win the Championship. So we have a three-way fight for the 2011 FIA World Touring Car Championship, that's more than you could say about a lot of series at present.

New changes - will they work?

British Touring Car Championship organisers TOCA have (not unexpectedly) implemented some more technical changes ahead of next weekend's race at Oulton Park, in a statement which appears to have been misunderstood a little bit in some circles.

Series Director Alan Gow has made a point of promising equality between all Super 2000 and cars running with the BTCC's future powerplant specification, which is a low-cost 2.0 litre turbocharged engine. It's been considered certainly from those on the fully-compliant Super 2000 side (that's RML, West Surrey Racing, Tech-Speed Motorsport, Geoff Steel Racing and Team ES Racing) that the championship hasn't attained that parity yet.

The argument from some of the the 'turbo teams' side has been that a turbo would always out-perform a normally aspirated car in certain areas, you should have done what we all have done and put a turbo in.  I'm actually quite surprised by the number of drivers and teams that have stated something along these lines.

The other argument put forward is that Chevrolet aren't showing their true hand, and that Jason Plato is holding back slightly to make his case to get the turbo drivers penalised. It's safe to say the Cruze isn't right up with the pace of the Team Dynamics Honda Civic whatever the case, but maybe he's not as far back as he's making out.

Likewise, Plato has said the top turbo runners aren't showing their full hand either, with very little tyre degradation seen from them at Thruxton, a notorious tyre killer.

The situation is TOCA have promised parity between teams that run to the full S2000 rules and those that switch to their Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) chassis and engine platforms for two years. Parity is not an easy thing to get right, and whilst they continue to tweak the regulations to try and get it right, the advantage has so far fallen on the side on those who have switched to the NGTC turbo.

The NGTC engine is a cheaper engine to run in the long term. It's not as high-spec as the Super 2000 engine, and certainly a fraction of the cost of the 1.6 turbos that are now required to compete in the FIA World Touring Car Championship. Their cheaper price is the point, and has been the main driver for teams to switch engines (which would have needed rebuilding for 2011) but not chassis. The turbocharged nature gives it a good bit of start/finish straight oomph, which is what the normally aspirated group are vocal about; from the most vocal (Jason Plato), to the not happy with it and very often mentioning it (Rob Collard, Chris James and Paul O'Neill) to the getting on with it, probably not their main problem (Nick Foster). Plato gets most of the attention but that's because he's the two-times champion and the big star of the BTCC, and the first one ITV go to speak to. That certainly doesn't mean he's the only one complaining, especially when you talk to the teams as well.

Now, TOCA have implemented a set of weight changes for Oulton Park. As I reported on TouringCarTimes, this is a different approach by TOCA, but hardly a new one. Playing around with weights is usually the first action taken in touring car racing, and the championships' have been doing this for years - in fact, the entire success ballast system is based on it. All the Chevrolet models, all powered by RML's 2.0 litre normally aspirated engine get 25kg knocked off their previous minimum weight, getting them down to 1,145kg from 1,170kg.

Jason Plato has been the championing for changes across all media since Thruxton, and so far one of the things he's not asked for a weight break. He's complained primarily about a lack of qualifying pace, because he can't overtake a turbo car in the races, and so can only pick-up results from reverse grid fortune in race three. The reigning champion has called for lower boost settings and for a restrictor to be fitted to the turbocharged cars in order to equalise the performance.

In the races however, that normally aspirated Chevrolet is still very fast. JP set the outright best race lap of the weekend at Thruxton in race three, and not just by a small margin. This shows the car in race trim is very good, the only problems with it are in qualifying and overtaking in the race.

So, what will this weight break do? Well, 25kg is a generous cut in weight, and should definitely help the Cruze move further up the order in qualifying. How much it will help in keeping up with a turbo-powered car into the braking zones remains to be seen, but if the car can no qualify well, TOCA have at least knocked on the head one of the issues.

If the weight break is enough to give a low championship ballasted Plato (9kg) pole position on merit, a repeat of Brands Hatch's race one and two wins is certainly not impossible, although I wouldn't go as far as Matt Neal's comment that JP could do the hat-trick.

Quite interestingly, Paul O'Neill has pointed out on Twitter that their (Tech-Speed's) Chevrolet Cruze is incapable of reaching the new reduced weight setting. It remains to be seen whether the newer RML-run, ex-2010 World Touring Cars will have the same problem as Tech-Speed's 2009 specification cars.  The Chevrolet Cruze should be able to drop as much as 20kg from its base weight, as that's how much they're allowed to remove in the World Touring Car Championshipm with the ballast ranging from +40kg to -20kg.

The BMWs in comparison have lost only 10kg, but have also had the restrictive first gear ratio removed. This will help a lot, as generally a good two to three places on the race start can be made up by the rear-wheel drive 320si if it gets a good launch. Effectively it's like adding a few places to the BMW's grid spot. Then the only issue is for the BMW to hold off the turbo cars behind them, as you'll quickly find the Achille's Heel of the BMW comes into play - a turbo car can certainly get close and give the BMW that extra little nudge that it doesn't respond well to. Something to watch out for at Oulton Park.

Then there is the 'another turbo reduction'. There hasn't actually been one yet. The boost settings that all the teams will run with at Oulton Park will be exactly the same as Thruxton initially, which are now varied across the field after the top boost settings of several cars were locked in after Donington Park. This was something Honda have not been very happy about, arguing that they now have the lowest boost setting on the grid.

For Oulton Park, TOCA have said there is a suspended implementation of a reduction of 0.05 bar. Considering the last change was 0.1, that's not much, and as Dave Mountain of Mountune Racing pointed out on a recent article on BTCC Pages, the boost reduction will have a different effect on each engine. But the important thing is the change is suspended - which means no one has to implement it yet.

Basically, there's a tricky part in the regulations for TOCA which is that there's notice required of 24 hours before they can make any changes in order to successfully implement its parity directive during a race weekend. With all the teams not showing their true pace throughout the free practice sessions, it's not until qualifying that you actually get to see anyone's true pace - mainly we need to look at Honda here, who are capable of pulling out some incredible laps in qualifying. Since qualifying takes place around 4pm each meeting, previously TOCA would need to look through the data and publish a directive within 30 minutes to even get it to apply for the third race on Sunday. This suspended notice means TOCA are treating that as waiving the 24 hour notice by telling all the teams to get ready for a 0.05 bar reduction in advance at any point during the weekend.

It'll be interesting to see if TOCA decide to enact it over the weekend, and whether it's applied individually or to all of the NGTC-powered cars.

So, in free practice we'll see the usual manoeuvring which is becoming a staple of both the BTCC and the WTCC this year - with a lot of turbo cars not going as fast as they normally would, to ensure they're not hit with the 0.05bar drop before qualifying to start with. If the S2000 drivers qualify a good bit higher than normal, and we're looking for at least a top three from Plato with the amount of ballast he's running, then we're off to a good start.

Touring Cars - The Movie

Just for a bit of fun, just trying to put together the right cast list for a movie that no one will ever be making. Looking for drivers from the British Touring Car and World Touring Car Championship's mainly, but feel free to venture off to drivers that aren't too obscure and I'll post the candidates here.

I know I've done the blatantly obvious one first, but hey, I'm just the producer, you can be the creative staff!:)

Message me on twitter at @neilhudson with your suggestions and/or use the hashtag #touringcarsthemovie

Eric Bana as Yvan Muller

 Phil Collins as Gabriele Tarquini (via @quizeye)

I'm not sure this works for me...I think the main problem might be the idea that Phil Collins is actually an actor! :)

Kevin Bridges as Mat Jackson (via @tracktalentuk)

Kevin Bridges will probably have a bit of drama school to turn his comedy talent into that of a worthy actor, but surely most of the effort will be having to drop that Glaswegian accent!

Sean Connery as John Cleland (via @revgear)

I think at least the accent's covered

Edward Norton as Gordon Shedden (via @gracle)

Michael Madsen as Alan Gow (via @gracle)

I also reckon he could double as Marcello Lotti

Jesse Eisenberg as Javier Villa Garcia (via @peterdhodges)

Separated at birth!

Tom Hanks as Fabrizio Giovanardi (via @gracle)

 

Robert De Niro as Bernd Schneider (via @garethhopper)

Gareth suggested De Niro for Giovanardi, but we'd already cast Hanks. Plus, reckon he's more of a doppelganger for DTM star Bernd Schneider.

Johnny Depp as James Thompson (via @gracle)

Charlie Sheen as Andy Priaulx (via @neilcole)

Patrick Dempsey as Ricardo Zonta (via @jakeyorath)

Part-time racer himself as former-F1 and current GT and Brazilian Stock Car regular Ricardo Zonta.

Michael McIntyre as Liam Griffin (via @The_Lap_Times)

Emma Watson as Susie Stoddart (via @revgear)

Kieran Culkin as Andy Neate (via @matthewpoat)

Ewan McGregor as Colin Turkington (via @revgear)

New BTCC Regulations: Who is the fastest?

With more cars switching to the low-cost turbocharged engine this season, we saw a greater variety in terms of lap times and speed at Brands Hatch. So who's got the best car for this year?

There are two obvious pieces of data to look through; lap times and speed traps. Looking into the data from the first round of the 2011 British Touring Car Championship wields some interesting discoveries, as well as some obvious ones.

Firstly, it's important to set out this disclaimer. The late arrival of the full NGTC-specification car means there's little to be learned from looking at the two Toyotas at this point. With Speedworks not picking up their car until two weeks ago, and Dynojet Racing's first laps taking place at the weekend, it's safe to say we've not seen the real performance capability of the cars as yet, though they are included here for the sake of completeness, plus there were some good signs for the new car.

 Speed

 First, looking at speed. I've taken each drivers' best captured speed through the start/finish line speed trap (the fastest of the two traps) for the weekend. You can see there's an obvious pattern to start with. The top 11 drivers are all Super 2000 cars fitted with the Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) specification engine (S2000/NGTC).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's probably not much of a surprise that a turbocharged car would clock the highest speed of course. It's more interesting here to look at it by driver.

The Honda Civic of Gordon Shedden was actually the fastest car through the speed trap all weekend. In fact, both Hondas set their fastest speeds during the races. Matt Neal's fastest speed clocked in qualifying was 129.8mph, whilst he went through at 130.6mph during the second race…did the Honda have even more in reserve for the race even after that record breaking qualifying lap?

 The oddity in the 'S2000/NGTC' class of cars was the AmD Milltek Racing VW Golf of Tom Onslow-Cole. The Golf's best speed put it 21^st of the 22 cars, with only the untested NGTC Toyota of Frank Wrathall any slower. Considering Tom Boardman's SEAT has exactly the same engine, there's an obvious issue for the team there.

 It's also worth noting the respectable top speed clocked by Tony Hughes in the other Toyota, as he was as fast as race three podium finisher Paul O'Neill, at 124.7mph.

 If we take the data and average it by car, and compare them against each other you can see clearly the top speed advantage of the NGTC-engined cars over the normally aspirated ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Honda is out on top with its Neil Brown built engine, with the Mountune-engined Ford Focuses collectively second.

 Interestingly, the Vauxhall Vectra (discounting the VW & Toyota for reasons already given) is the slowest of all the NGTC-powered cars with its Swindon Engine, even though the car was one of the most competitive all weekend, particularly for Andrew Jordan and James Nash.

 The top speed of the Chevrolet Cruze 2010 (RML's cars) is almost identical to the average top speed of the BMW 320si. The older Cruze is a little further back. Averaging the speed of the Toyota drops it right down to last, but if Hughes' speed alone was used it would sit between the BMW and the 2009 specification Cruze used by Tech-Speed.

 However, speed only tells you how fast the car can get to down the straight. Any driver can just point the car and push the pedal to get to the speed trap? The question is how does the driver use this power along with the handling of the car and his own skill to convert that into a competitive lap time?

 Lap Times

 Looking at the laps, and most of the fastest laps unsurprisingly come from the qualifying session, with just a few exceptions. This is the only session of the season where the cars carry the same amount of penalty ballast (that is, none), so it's quite an important one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt Neal's pole lap was almost three-tenths of a second faster than Andrew Jordan's, who pulled a great result from the ageing Vectra to secure the front-row in qualifying.

 It's not a straight list of NGTC-engined cars this time, with Jason Plato putting the newer Cruze up there in third with Alex MacDowall less than a tenth behind in fifth.

 Paul O'Neill and Rob Collard were also able to produce good times from their cars and position themselves ahead of a number of the NGTC-powered S2000 cars.

 Tony Hughes managed to set his best lap in race two in the full-NGTC Toyota Avensis after issues in qualifying, which was faster than Chris James in the tried and tested Chevrolet Lacetti, who'd also set his best time in a race rather than qualifying.

 Grouping the average lap time per car, and again keeping the two Chevrolet Cruze-running teams separate as there was a marked difference in performance between the two, we can see how they compare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last year's World Touring Car Championship winning Cruze is within a very respectable time of the Honda Civic. Tom Boardman, being a one man average as the only SEAT actually pops the Lehmann-engined Leon into third, just ahead of close pairing of the Swindon-engined Vauxhalls and the Mountune-powered Fords.

 The BMW 320si, despite comparable top speed times to the Cruze is losing ground in the corners, with a notable gap back from the leading five cars. The older Cruze model is just behind the three BMWs, with Onslow-Cole's struggling Golf just within striking distance.

 Chris James is the sole represented Chevrolet Lacetti, and his inexperience sees the ex-RML car quite a bit behind the leading pack, but ahead of the average of the two Toyotas.

 Summary

So, what can actually we actually conclude from this? Well, firstly it's important to point out that all of this ignores reliability, tyre drop off and other smaller factors, so only generally summarised conclusions can be made in any case.

 It appears as though Honda certainly have the quickest package over a single lap as well as down the straight, definitely fixing what was their Achilles Heel from last season. If Matt Neal hadn't have been knocked out of race one, it's entirely possible that Honda could well have won all three races at Brands Hatch, and we could have a different championship leader.

 The Chevrolet however, clearly has a very balanced car, despite its top speed disadvantage. The ideal scenario for them is what actually happened at Brands Hatch, with a strong grid position and good placing out of the first corner thanks to the fast starting nature of the normally aspirated Chevrolet.

 With Plato able to fend off the turbo cars of Nash, Jackson and Shedden in each of the three races, he was able to take a lot of points from the weekend, but the question is how much can that Chevrolet overtake? His only chance to demonstrate this was in race three, but as he was weighed down with 45kg of penalty ballast, that would certainly have been a factor in slowing him down. If this was gone, could he move up the order past the turbo cars?

 The Fords have got definitely got speed, but appear to have work to do on the chassis. The Vauxhall teams appear to have the opposite issue, and could use more top-speed from Swindon to improve their already strong package.

 The SEAT seems to be a safe all-rounder, and if you can't have a Civic, you probably would want the SEAT. It'll be interesting to see how much closer the Golf can get as well once they resolve their issues.

 The ageing BMW is struggling on power and handling, and the results of the car are resting on the skill of the drivers rather than the ability of the car.

 It's not fair to judge the performance of Chris James' Lacetti until the newcomer gains more experience. Similarly with the full NGTC Toyotas, which are at the beginning of a long development cycle.

 All in all, at the moment, it looks good to have a Honda Civic for now, it'll be interesting to see the Fords develop. Plato and RML are still going to be very strong just because they are Plato and RML.

Reversed grids…what are they good for?

As you can see in my WTCC preview here on TouringCarTimes, the World Touring Car Championship is implementing a new reverse grid system from this weekend's opening round.

Excerpt from the preview:

In order to prevent drivers from dropping places or hanging back at the outside of the top eight in race one, the reverse grid will now apply to the top ten placed cars from the first qualifying session.

How this will affect strategy in qualifying will be quite interesting, as it is now beneficial, albeit risky, for a driver to finish lower down in the top ten in the first qualifying session, and he can then go all out in Q2 for pole position for race one. This means the pole position driver for both races can theoretically be the same person, even after a driver wins in race one, meaning both races could be won by the same driver from pole position, which will be a first for the WTCC (and ETCC).

Also, if a driver suffers with a technical problem or damages his car in Q1 before setting a competitive time, that driver will be hampered throughout both races as the grid for positions 11+ will be identical in both races. Previously, the driver could at least work his way through the field in the first race to improve his starting position for race two. If he could also break into the top eight, he could even secure pole position for the second race.

The end result of this change will be a less random spread of points throughout the field – with points generally allocated throughout those with the capability of regularly qualifying in the top ten, which will certainly favour the turbocharged Chevrolets and BMWs early in the season.

So basically, drivers will no longer be able to manipulate the result of race 1 to impact where they start in race 2. No, now they need to manipulate qualifying to do it instead, which is a lot trickier so the WTCC is hoping no one’s going to try it. We may yet be surprised, but it probably won’t happen often; but then again dropping positions in the races didn’t happen too often in the WTCC either, that was always very much a BTCC trait.

I asked the director of a smaller championship once (one that had a race 2 grid that started the same way race 1 ended, a little bit retro huh?) why he hadn’t introduced reverse grids. The answer I got was he thought they were a bit gimmicky. I couldn't really argue with that, after all what’s the guy who finished eighth/tenth done to earn pole? Whether it's Andy Priaulx driving up to eighth with a gallant charge through the field from the back, or Ian Curley snatching pole at Brands Hatch in a three-seconds-off-the-pace Lexus as a result of just being last.

The truth of it is, reverse grids don’t really have a place in real motorsport. Qualifying is there to put everyone in the order of their one lap pace, testing their ability to set-up a car and string together that perfect lap. The race that follows allows for strategy, tactics and reliability to change that order and deliver a good event for the spectators and drivers.

In touring car racing however, there are no pit-stops, and the car just has to last 20-30 minutes – what strategy are you left with but go fast and bump the other guy out of the way? (which is quite often the one that’s chosen). Reverse grids are a necessary evil for this category of racing else you end up with exceedingly dull racing.

Quite interestingly there was a poll in AUTOSPORT last week asking the best way of spicing up an F1 race, after the suggestion by Bernie Ecclestone to add artificially wet conditions to rounds of the championship. Behind the very sensible top result with 67% voting for ‘do nothing at all’, reverse grids popped up in second place with 13%; so they definitely seem to be a publicly accepted way of dealing with the issue.

Looking at this specific change for the WTCC, why have we got it and why will it help?

Well, the culprit is quite certainly a former two-times British Touring Car champion called Alain Menu. On two occasions last year, the Swiss driver snuck back to gain a good grid position for race two. Feel free to read my older post here for more information and thoughts on those incidents.

To stop him and Chevrolet or whoever else dares from doing this again, they’ve now pointed the reverse grid at the first qualifying result instead.

It’ll be interesting if it will also be deemed a breach of Article 151c if a driver doesn’t go out in the last moments of Q1 because his 7th/8th/9th place looks pretty safe. Time will tell.

So will it help? Probably not. The dropping back issue was as I said, never much of a problem for the WTCC. If anything at least it meant you had two battles to watch as if nothing was happening up front you had the battle for eighth to watch instead.

The BTCC was the only series where drivers behaved strangely to drop back, I recall a race where three drivers were trying their hardest to finish in tenth place, all going as slow as they could. It was a year after this farcical behaviour that the random draw was introduced, it made the grid reverse a little more ‘gimmicky’ in a sense, but it works very well for the BTCC. However it's not something I’d like to see in the WTCC.

So how else can a grid be set? Well one of the most novel qualifying practices can be found in the Argentinean TC2000 championship, which just introduced a few new tweaks to their qualifying system at their first race last weekend.

They have a normal qualifying session, and then drop the positions of the top twelve drivers in the championship by the corresponding amounts (12 for 1st, one for 12th). Last year they had a sprint race with this adjusted grid, and the final result defined the grid for the feature race. This had a very strong effect on the championship results, I’d argue to the extent where this directly affected who became champion in the end, but it does mean they can do away with reverse grids and ballast.

Now, in a format not too dissimilar to the qualifying method used for the Daytona 500, they now split that qualifying race into two races (with a 34 grid, they’re one of a few touring car series who could dare do that!).  Effectively this means each pass in the sprint race is worth two positions on the grid for the feature race. They also give points for the qualifying races, certainly a few more than the FIA GT1 World Championship gives out for its qualifying race (which is identical in length and format to its feature race).

It’s an interesting concept that works well for TC2000, but probably not suited to many other championships due to the smaller grid sizes and all of the politics that will be involved. Honda Racing Argentina Team Principal Victor Rosso told me last year when the championship and teams sit down to discuss the next season's regulations, no one votes against it as they'd rather have this than penalty ballast and reversed grids.

I’m hoping the new WTCC qualifying format does deliver something new and fresh, but as I’ve indicated earlier, I suspect the results will become less diverse as a result of this new system. In a year where Chevrolet are almost unchallenged at the front, the timing of this change could well be a little off.

Scandinavia decides to copy British regulations

Today saw a pretty important moment in the current changing world of touring car regulations, as the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship confirm it will adopt the Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) model currently being introduced into the British Touring Car Championship from 2012.

The STCC, born back in 1996 modelled on the BTCC even then, will introduce an unchanged version of the NGTC next year after some months of debate. I had spoken to BTCC Series Director Alan Gow back in August of last year as an announcement similar today’s was due, and he was optimistic of the move and what it would mean for touring car racing in north Europe. Just a month later, things had changed quite a bit– with the STCC now looking at a variation with all rear-wheel drive and larger engines, with Gow a little less enthused about what was happening, whilst the STCC’s ‘TTA’ (think of it as the STCC’s version of Formula 1's FOTA if you will) was putting forward a suggestion to run with the specification which is run in the Silhouette 1 class of the Belgian Touring Car Series - a mid-engined space frame silhouette with a Solution F built powerplant.

The Solution F and NGTC packages would be much cheaper than the current Super 2000 regulations, and even more so compared to S2000 with the new World specification 1.6 litre turbo engine. NGTC  has come out a bit more expensive than first touted, and so the TTA was pushing to run the Belgian silhouette model as an interim measure to watch and see which ‘wins out’ between the FIA's new S2000 with 1.6 turbo regulations, or the BTCC’s NGTC model.

There are probably two things that have driven STCC Managing Director Bob Huzell to make his call today.

1. The significant take-up of the low cost 2.0 litre NGTC engine by almost all of the BTCC teams. Even teams with significantly smaller budgets (Dynojet Racing, Rob Austin Racing) are developing new engines, certainly a surprise as they were the kind of operation's that the TOCA engine developed by Swindon Engines was aimed for and

2. Alan Gow’s recent appointment as president of the FIA Touring Car Commission.

Although it’s not correct to assume that Gow’s appointment means NGTC will become the World Touring Car Championship model as well in the future at this point. The STCC’s move should only be considered as one that mirrors in its intention with the BTCC's intention – to drive costs down and encourage more competition into the championship, and to be able to survive without involvement from manufacturers. Indeed as a result, more manufacturers could be tempted into either championship because of the lower cost as part of a slightly different approach to past years. This has already been seen with Ford, Honda & Chevrolet in the UK – which aren’t works efforts to the extent as a works car has been in the past.

The WTCC’s alignment with the FIA World Rally Championship’s regulations has a theoretical benefit to manufacturers who wish to compete in both, and keeps the WTCC a top level professional category without the tag of being a low cost championship. The Global Racing Engine concept only further opens up opportunities in future years - the series is still strong with BMW, SEAT, Chevrolet & Volvo all already building 1.6 litre turbo-charged engines, and the WTCC is all set to start with at least 18 cars for the season opening round in Brazil. The only issue for WTCC teams is they now have less places to sell their cars after they're done with them, with them no longer eligible in the BTCC, and the Danish and Swedish championships merging into one championship, and now also following suit with NGTC.

Today's news is very good for the BTCC, as there will be two championships developing new cars and engines which can be sold on to teams in each series to compete with. With the STCC enjoying a strong position in terms of sponsorship investment to the teams, which has seen world class drivers attracted to the series such as James Thompson, Jan Magnussen, Rickard Rydell & Colin Turkington – and the BTCC still enjoying full crowds, a strong TV package and highly competitive racing, there’s certainly more reason to be more positive about the current and future state of touring car racing today.

 

Russian money powers SUNRED in 2011

...or was it diesel?

Anyway, Gabriele Tarquini's back, as Lukoil join SUNRED Engineering for the 2011 season. Thereby allowing the pseudo-independent outfit to continue for another year, with manufacturer SEAT pretty much out of world motorsport entirely following the closure of its Supercopa & Eurocup series.

Alexander Dudukalo is the man to thank. The Russian moves up from the now deceased SEAT Eurocup along with Pepe Oriola to the top flight World Touring Car Championship. Although the duo were interestingly described by SUNRED boss Joán Orus recently as "two young drivers" to Autosport...Dudukalo is over twice as old as his new team-mate. Though that may make him sound old, he's only 34...yikes!

The main news is that the 2009 World Touring Car champion will return with SUNRED, despite some indications he made late in 2010 saying he probably wouldn't be if he had to go through another season like that.

Unfortunately, he's probably discovered there's nowhere else to be at the moment, rather than expecting a real challenge for the title in 2011. This is because SUNRED will have an unsurmountable handicap starting the season with the 2.0 litre TDI engine. The diesel may have been the scourge of the 2008-2009 seasons, but with no further development and the 1.6 litre turbo-charged petrol engines that Chevrolet & BMW will run against them this year, Tarquini and his SUNRED team-mates will be struggling with non-podium finishes until SUNRED is ready to race its 1.6 turbo, even possibly at the mercy of a number of independent BMWs.

The concerns over the competitiveness of the SEAT León TDI have been made clear by the only other team that was running them last year, with Zengo Motorsport saying they won't be racing the León this year, and we believe that car they're switching to is also the BMW 320 TC.

With almost all touring car level drives in all national series (with the exception of the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship) requiring the driver to bring his own budget, if Tarquini wanted to stay busy for 2011, his only choice was to stay with a works(ish) team in the WTCC - Chevrolet were all booked up, so it had to be SEAT.

The Italian will have to just run a holding pattern campaign, helping SUNRED develop the 1.6 turbo for later in the year and look forward to 2012.