RE: Lotus To Help Equalise BTCC Engines

[chimaeras]

Is it now legal for touring cars to come together ? I hear the term " Touring Car Tap " .
Years ago this used to be an offence !

[bigbadbikercats]

chimaeras said:

Is it now legal for touring cars to come together ? I hear the term " Touring Car Tap " .
Years ago this used to be an offence !

It could be apocryphal (I haven't felt motivated to look it up in the on-line version) but I seem to recall someone suggesting that there was an appendix to the "Driving Standards" section of the MSA "Blue Book" specifically covering contact between cars in BTCC.

If that's true then it lends credibility to the "bumper cars" viewpoint. If it's not then something seems to be badly wrong with enformement. Either way the fact that the idea strikes me as even half-way plausible suggests that BTCC is setting a lousy example and creating a totally false and potentially damaging impression of what motor sport is (or at least in my view should be) about....

I mean just look at the various classic/historic/heritage touring car series. They generally manage to provide close, exciting, entertaining, and competitive racing from end to end of the field amongst a huge variety of cars (I wonder what JP's response would be to being expected to race a Mini Cooper against a Ford Galaxie...) and while there isthe odd tap (which underlines the fact that they're racing for real) they manage to do it without any deliberate contact - if the "Gentleman Racers" in the classics can manage it why can't the professionals in the contemporary cars?

[EDLT]

When the BTCC was at Knockhill they had the MINI Championship on, I'm pretty sure there was more contact/corner cutting/just driving on the grass to pass in that race than there was in any of the touring car races.

[MG CHRIS]

chimaeras said:

Is it now legal for touring cars to come together ? I hear the term " Touring Car Tap " .
Years ago this used to be an offence !

No it didn't during the 90s the 'best era' it had its own share of dodgy driving just look at 92 final. Contact has been apart of btcc for a while its not a new thing and most of the contact went unpunished. The driving this year has been a lot cleaner than the good old days and a lot of of the incidents have been dealt with by fines and penalty points.

I even watched caterham racing on motors tv the other day and there was more contact in one race than a whole weekend of a btcc round so stop spouting rubbish about contact in the btcc.

[AlexKing]

MG CHRIS said:

No it didn't during the 90s the 'best era' it had its own share of dodgy driving just look at 92 final. Contact has been apart of btcc for a while its not a new thing and most of the contact went unpunished. The driving this year has been a lot cleaner than the good old days and a lot of of the incidents have been dealt with by fines and penalty points.

I even watched caterham racing on motors tv the other day and there was more contact in one race than a whole weekend of a btcc round so stop spouting rubbish about contact in the btcc.

You are Alan Gow and I claim my free Neal/Plato commemorative handbag.

I do still watch BTCC - I watch any motorsport that's free on telly - but it doesn't stop me criticising stuff when I think its deteriorated from its peak. There's contact and contact - I quite like the Ginetta Juniors on the same bill as that seems genuine, but BTCC just comes across to me as contrived. It mat be a false impression, but it's the one I get. The idiotically sycophantic ITV coverage probably doesn't help.

[MG CHRIS]

AlexKing said:

MG CHRIS said:

No it didn't during the 90s the 'best era' it had its own share of dodgy driving just look at 92 final. Contact has been apart of btcc for a while its not a new thing and most of the contact went unpunished. The driving this year has been a lot cleaner than the good old days and a lot of of the incidents have been dealt with by fines and penalty points.

I even watched caterham racing on motors tv the other day and there was more contact in one race than a whole weekend of a btcc round so stop spouting rubbish about contact in the btcc.

You are Alan Gow and I claim my free Neal/Plato commemorative handbag.

I do still watch BTCC - I watch any motorsport that's free on telly - but it doesn't stop me criticising stuff when I think its deteriorated from its peak. There's contact and contact - I quite like the Ginetta Juniors on the same bill as that seems genuine, but BTCC just comes across to me as contrived. It mat be a false impression, but it's the one I get. The idiotically sycophantic ITV coverage probably doesn't help.

You got a point it depends on when you first started watching it if you got in to btcc during the 90s your going to find todays cars/ racing worse and when you see only 1-2 manafacture team in it compared with the 90s when there was 8-9 you would think its weak now, people who stated watching during the different era's will thing its better when they started watching it. Me i started watching it when mg car back with wsr with the green and black zs that is mainly why i have one and i only see the champonship growing with independent teams that are looking to enter.

Neal and plato incidents is nothing new its been going on for years and this year ive just ignored them, but there has always been drivers even during the 90s that would love to beat 2 sts out of one another.

Apart from the plato and neal the racing this year has been as good as ever in my view i can only see it getting better.

Oh im not alan gow wouldn't want to have his job to be honest.

[AlexKing]

MG CHRIS said:

You got a point it depends on when you first started watching it if you got in to btcc during the 90s your going to find todays cars/ racing worse and when you see only 1-2 manafacture team in it compared with the 90s when there was 8-9 you would think its weak now, people who stated watching during the different era's will thing its better when they started watching it. Me i started watching it when mg car back with wsr with the green and black zs that is mainly why i have one and i only see the champonship growing with independent teams that are looking to enter.

Neal and plato incidents is nothing new its been going on for years and this year ive just ignored them, but there has always been drivers even during the 90s that would love to beat 2 sts out of one another.

Apart from the plato and neal the racing this year has been as good as ever in my view i can only see it getting better.

Oh im not alan gow wouldn't want to have his job to be honest.

Hmm, by that logic, I'd see the F1 from the early/mid 90's as being superior to what went before or after, and I really don't. I think it's the lack of proper manufacturer involvement and competition that stymies it these days. I don't pretend to know how to get them back, I just think it was better when they were there.

[EDLT]

MG CHRIS said:

AlexKing said:

MG CHRIS said:

No it didn't during the 90s the 'best era' it had its own share of dodgy driving just look at 92 final. Contact has been apart of btcc for a while its not a new thing and most of the contact went unpunished. The driving this year has been a lot cleaner than the good old days and a lot of of the incidents have been dealt with by fines and penalty points.

I even watched caterham racing on motors tv the other day and there was more contact in one race than a whole weekend of a btcc round so stop spouting rubbish about contact in the btcc.

You are Alan Gow and I claim my free Neal/Plato commemorative handbag.

I do still watch BTCC - I watch any motorsport that's free on telly - but it doesn't stop me criticising stuff when I think its deteriorated from its peak. There's contact and contact - I quite like the Ginetta Juniors on the same bill as that seems genuine, but BTCC just comes across to me as contrived. It mat be a false impression, but it's the one I get. The idiotically sycophantic ITV coverage probably doesn't help.

You got a point it depends on when you first started watching it if you got in to btcc during the 90s your going to find todays cars/ racing worse and when you see only 1-2 manafacture team in it compared with the 90s when there was 8-9 you would think its weak now, people who stated watching during the different era's will thing its better when they started watching it. Me i started watching it when mg car back with wsr with the green and black zs that is mainly why i have one and i only see the champonship growing with independent teams that are looking to enter.

Neal and plato incidents is nothing new its been going on for years and this year ive just ignored them, but there has always been drivers even during the 90s that would love to beat 2 sts out of one another.

Apart from the plato and neal the racing this year has been as good as ever in my view i can only see it getting better.

Oh im not alan gow wouldn't want to have his job to be honest.

I don't know why you bother, once he's got bored someone else will say they should bring back the golden era where everyone drove a Sierra instead of this stupid 'variety' we have now.

[Fire99]

Replace the lot with Mk7 Jags and Minis.

[Scuffers]

MG CHRIS said:

This is to only regulate the turbo engines nothing has been said about parity between turbo and n/a which could idicate nobody would run n/a cars next year. For people who say why shouldn't they let them do what they like is that we will end up like the end of the 90s with only manafactures could afford to run cars that is what we don't need. The rules are there to try to cut spending for teams and get new teams into the btcc it has already done that, RAR, dyno-jet, speedworks, welch motorsport, thorney and so on wouldn't be on the grid without the new rules.

Anyway must be a slow news day for pH this was issued last week.

disagree ...

problem with touring car is they need to decide what they want.

the engines are still not production engines, they still cost money, and the idea of running a std engine is also stupid and not cheap.

Yes, Touring car back in the 90's was great, and yes it cost big money, but 90% of that money had nothing to do with the engines and everything to do with the rest of the cars and who was being paid to build/run them.

if they want to cut costs, go back to cars that are closer to production cars, with their production engines and gearboxes, yes that will mean some cars are faster than others, but so what? I mean, getting back to the real world, nobody is going to by a chevy cruise over a BMW as a performance car.

[Berger]

Welshbeef said:

Ahem may I introduce you to Ozzie V8 racing.
Fast
Competitive
Big field
Amazing tracks
Long races plus sprint races
Their noise
The punters who watch have cars they would aspire to owning vs BTCC most already do and they are mundane. I mean a chevy Cruise wtf Honda civic yuck

Not much different really, sure the cars are faster and the races a bit more varied, but then its the top flight motorsport here.

It's just Team Vodafone vs FPR with frosty at the moment.

Sure some of the tracks are amazing, but some aren't that hot, Sydney isn't the best. Most of the British tracks are pretty cracking.

[Graebob]

Scuffers said:

I mean, getting back to the real world, nobody is going to by a chevy cruise over a BMW as a performance car.

Unless the production homologation special Cruze was faster than the equivalent BMW... which might happen if the manufacturers had to use standard engines/gearboxes...

</rose tint>

[emicen]

Welshbeef said:

Ahem may I introduce you to Ozzie V8 racing.
Fast
Competitive
Big field
Amazing tracks
Long races plus sprint races
Their noise
The punters who watch have cars they would aspire to owning vs BTCC most already do and they are mundane. I mean a chevy Cruise wtf Honda civic yuck

Whilst the timeline to Aussie V8s coming up in a BTCC thread is only marginally longer than the MK2 Escort bks coming up in a WRC one, its quite surprising from the eternal poster of "I might get this car but I'm an utter tightwad so heres eleventy billion iterations of fuel ecconomy calculations." Surely you understand purse strings?

The current regs have been introduced to lower the cost of competing because the days of big budget are over with teams unable to support such expenditure.

Aussie V8 cars cost in the region of $600,000AUD with engines a further $130,000. Annual budgets are in the $10M per car range. The new TOCA engines are about a tenth of that.

EDLT said:

When the BTCC was at Knockhill they had the MINI Championship on, I'm pretty sure there was more contact/corner cutting/just driving on the grass to pass in that race than there was in any of the touring car races.

Seeing as I was in that race I'm going to rise to that: Lets see a clip of all this contact and corner cutting.

There was zero notable contact in race 1 on Saturday or corner cutting. Steven had to cut Butcher's to avoid a crash in race 2 on Sunday and Hamish was hit twice. There were no instances of just driving off the track to make a pass and the cars simply dont have the suspension to be able to cut corners anything like the touring cars do.

Race 3 in the BTCC with the restart pile up and Plato getting punted had far more contact than those 2 races combined.

[MrKipling43]

The death of the BTCC IMO:

[MG CHRIS]

Death of the btcc? How do you mean by it having aerodynamic spoilers and so on that the other diden't then after that everyone used if so then i kind of agree but the btcc is not dead it's geting better back to the "good old days" that everyone seems to bang on about.

[williamp]

Oh I dont know. 1998 gave us, perhaps the best BTCC race of all time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0J9DX0PiOM&fea...

The rain, mansell and Donington helped too, of course

[MG CHRIS]

Brands hatch 2009 was close aswel as 1992 at silverstone both were better races than 98 donny don't forget the fotage of it on utube are the highlights of it some of that race was boring whereas they were always action in the final of 09 all through the race.

[Scuffers]

Graebob said:

Scuffers said:

I mean, getting back to the real world, nobody is going to by a chevy cruise over a BMW as a performance car.

Unless the production homologation special Cruze was faster than the equivalent BMW... which might happen if the manufacturers had to use standard engines/gearboxes...

</rose tint>

exactly, just how many Alfa 155's were sold of the back of BTCC?

why else would manufactures spend the money of there was not correlation to sales?

[Graebob]

Scuffers said:

Graebob said:

Scuffers said:

I mean, getting back to the real world, nobody is going to by a chevy cruise over a BMW as a performance car.

Unless the production homologation special Cruze was faster than the equivalent BMW... which might happen if the manufacturers had to use standard engines/gearboxes...

</rose tint>

exactly, just how many Alfa 155's were sold of the back of BTCC?

why else would manufactures spend the money of there was not correlation to sales?

My point was, how many Cruze's have been sold off the back of BTCC.

[Scuffers]

Graebob said:

My point was, how many Cruze's have been sold off the back of BTCC.

yes, I did get that...