Hello and a question

[lotuscortina]

Hello all
Been a veiwer of these forums for a while and now ready for the 1st post :)

Having been enjoying the BTCC so much this season, I felt inspired after Thruxton to dig the old Playstation out the loft for a bit of TOCA action and it was then that I rememberd that the BTCC used to have 2 Fords, 2 Audis, 2 Nissans, 2 Datsuns etc etc. My question is were these all works teams? and if so where are they? what happend to them and when?

Cheers.

[Iain]

Welcome. :) There are several answers to your question. Firstly the price of competing got so high, that some manufacturers pulled out because they simply couldn't justify it anymore. Ford allegedly spent £6m in 2000 to win the BTCC and that was with a car that arguably may not have been too good if it was up against the factory teams of previous years.

Also, the number of mergers and takeovers in the motor industry meant that manufacturers would end up competing against their parent or sister companies. For example Renault and Nissan together and Volvo and Ford together.

As for where are they now? Nissan always had a 3 year plan for the BTCC and they completed their objective in 1999, so left satisfied, as did Renault who dominated 1997 and probably got as much value from the series as they could have done. Audi left touring car racing altogether after 4WD was banned. They had a single season with a Front Wheel Drive car in 1998, but it was never as competitive as the Quattro version and they instead turned to Le Mans, where they have done rather well.

[Eurotech]

I suppose that is why the 90s were called the hayday of the btcc because the field was made up of around eight manufacturers and most bof them took wins.

If you look at nowadays, the btcc has only two commited manufacturers and there could be more.

[lotuscortina]

Good ansewers, thanks for that Iain.
I think i got a bit fed up with watching when there was the kind off 2 races going on at one thing, however as i said im really enjoying the series again at the moment and may try and and get to a meeting soon.

[AndySpeed]

Incidentally I'm also working on an FAQ for the BTCC:
http://www.btccaction.co.uk/faq.php

But there's also the official championship information:
http://www.btcc.net/html/regulations.php