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.

Comments

[Rev_Gear]

There's one possibility you haven't mentioned. The 0.05 bar adjustment doesn't have to be implemented between qualifying and race day, it could be done after the first or second race on the Sunday.

[Neil Hudson]

Absolutely. I haven't gone into that element in detail, but that's also what TOCA can now do that they never could before. They did that with the Arena Motorsport Fords at Snetterton last year, when the regulations were less clear for the 'alternative fuel' teams.

[Jonathan Massheder]

It's good to find this analysis and I wish I'd found it earlier (the championship is now over). Search results have been dominated by posts unconcerned with any facts.