BTCC gets technical

Words: Will Beaumont Photos: Chaydon Ford

Officials interfering with racing is bad. If the last season of F1 has taught us anything, it’s that. Similar tampering with the natural order of racing, but with weight penalties and lucky dip pole positions, is the biggest criticism most have of the British Touring Car Championship. The BTCC has tons going for it if you like your racing pure. There are various shapes of cars to help you keep track of what’s going on. The short sprint-like races reward committed driving and that results in spectacular overtaking manoeuvres. Even if, sometimes, they’re a bit too aggressive.

Arguably, some of the championship’s rules dilute that unadulterated competition. Adding weight to the drivers with the most points and awarding pole position spots after a bingo draw is all a bit too meddlesome for some. Still, you can’t deny that it ekes out the championship results right to the end of the season. Quite often the very last lap of the last race of the last round. And that’s exciting. The most ardent protesters of

Attached to the front of this 2018 championship winning 1 Series shell is the NGTC regulation front subframe and suspension, just like the ones found on all current BTCC cars.

The complex steering wheel from a modern race car, made even more baffling with a hybrid activation button and a dial for different hybrid maps.

such interference, such as myself, can’t help but deny that.

But now, possibly at the worst possible time, in the wake of the Michael Masi Abu Dhabi incident, the BTCC officials are about to add another level of intervention. This season, 2022, sees the introduction of a hybrid system in the cars, and with it, a more elaborate way for the organisers to penalise successful drivers.

We visited West Surrey Racing, the wildly successful race team that builds and supports the trio of 330e BMWs that will be competing in the 2022 BTCC season, for one of the Club’s live BMWednesdays events. While we were there, peeking at half-built race cars and trawling through toolbox drawers, we got to inspect the cars’ new electric drive systems and work out what that might mean for this year’s racing.

When it comes to the 2022 New Generation Touring Car-spec BTCC machines, despite having a completely fresh and additional propulsion system, there aren’t wild alterations to cars of previous years. The new hybrid drive has been engineered by Cosworth and consists of a motor that is located in a new gearbox and a battery and control pack contained in a safety cell that mounts close to where you would have found the success ballast in older cars.

As a result, the differences between a 2022 BTCC car and one from last year are minimal. It’s just the battery pack, the electrically-enabled gearbox and whatever updates the teams have made over the winter. Same NGTC-spec RML-designed front subframes as before, same fully adjustable front and rear doublewishbone suspension, same 350bhp-orso 2-litre turbocharged engines as before – either TOCA engines or, as is the case with the West Surrey Racing’s prepared BMWs, a manufacturer supplied motor. Only with plenty of modifications to make it suitable for racing, of course.

That means the teams, such as WSR, aren’t launching into the 2022 series having invested huge amounts of money on radically new cars. But that’s not to say there won’t be challenges getting

used to the hybrid paraphernalia. Carl Mitchell, WSR Team Manager, runs us through some of the challenges. But first, the benefits. ‘The championship ballast has now gone, so the huge lead slabs that we had to put in have thankfully disappeared. That has now been replaced by the battery and the other hybrid components. This is a very similar weight to what the first place ballast would have been last year, so everyone’s now carrying that added weight.’

Does working with a mass they’re already familiar with make setting up the car a little easier? ‘Yes, to a degree. This is slightly further forward and that will have an impact on the handling of the car. It’s hard to say how. We’ve only done one day’s worth of testing with all the kit, so we’re still assessing the impact. Certainly having the battery further forward, I would say is a disadvantage, just because of the balance of the car. And we’ve been told where that battery needs to mount within the chassis.’

The hardware is simple enough, then. And so are the basic rules of when the hybrid boost can be used. Each driver has the extra 40bhp at the touch of a button, the boost will only last for 15 seconds each lap, no matter the length of the circuit, and can be tapped into as often as the driver likes until all 15 seconds have been used. This system will also power the cars to allow them to line up on the grid using electric power alone.

In theory, it’s simple. The reality will be more demanding. ‘In terms of how it will work on a race weekend, in Free Practice 1 and 2, and in qualifying, we will have so many seconds that we can use the extra power that the hybrid gives us. If you’re leading the championship, you now get effectively less time to use that extra power.’

‘During the race, it will be fewer laps. So if you imagine that on a fifteen lap race where one of our drivers, if they were leading the championship, might only be allowed to use the hybrid for two of those laps.’

While 40bhp is not insignificant, it’s not going to be enough to launch the cars at a rate that will be noticeable to spectators. ‘One of our drivers described it, it’s not like hitting the NOS button. It almost just takes that resistance out of the car a little. The driver can feel it, but I don’t think you’ll necessarily see it, it’s that small bit of thrust you might need to make that overtake. Just small gains but they’ll all equate to something over the course of a race.’

We won’t be seeing cars leap forwards then, but spectators will know when a car is using the electric shove. An LED light will shine whenever a driver deploys the boost, so fans and, more importantly, other teams and drivers can monitor each car’s usage.

Not only will it be vital when a driver uses their additional power, but knowing what boost your competitors have in reserve will be tactically essential. ‘There are many different strategic ways you can use this hybrid system and that’s something all the teams will learn as we move forward. I am sure, eventually, we will all work out where it’s best to deploy and whether you want to use that system to either attack or defend.

‘There will be a lot of strategy that comes into it. The safety car is not unknown in touring cars, it makes an appearance fairly regularly. We will need to start thinking about how much hybrid has been used before the safety car period and what should be saved to use after a safety car.’ Thankfully, conserving power won’t be part of a race tactic, nothing would be more tedious than that. The gearbox-mounted motor will have the ability to recharge the battery under deceleration and braking, so there’ll be no instances of drivers running out of battery before the end of the race.

The electrified drivetrain is more involved than massive hunks of lead, that’s for sure. And it’s for the entire grid

The carbonfibre safety cell that houses the hybrid batteries in WSR’s 2022 BTCC-spec BMW 330e. The same unit is found in each car on the BTCC grid, its exact position in the car is dictated by the organisers

to manage, not just the most successful teams. The inevitable consequence of this more complex racing, and the more intricate way the officials can slow down the fastest drivers, will be that drivers will rely more heavily on tactics than full-bore committed driving alone. There will be teams that have many spotters monitoring how much boost each car has to use, teams with brainy people who can calculate when best to utilise the available boost, deciding what position is best to finish in, whether it’s worth working your way up the points table early on or not, for instance. There will be incredibly wellorganised teams, and they will have an advantage. In the BTCC, the drivers are allowed to communicate with the pits via radio, so quick decisions can be quickly implemented.

The BTCC is getting technical and super sophisticated, thanks to the new hybrid system. Not because the technology is all that complicated, not because it’s going to create any meaningful positive environmental impact, not because it will be paving the way for new innovation. No, BTCC is going to go through an era where decisions made outside of the car, from the rule setters to the teams, may well be just as significant as those made by the drivers.

Although that will bring many people out in a cold sweat, with flashbacks to Horner and Wolf hollering down the radio, we shouldn’t be so worried. Remember, at its core, it’s the same pack of determined drivers battling around iconic circuits for just a few laps. Also, the BTCC organisers are experts at teasing out and mildly manipulating the championship standings for years. We shouldn’t expect anyone to fumble in and Michael Masi rules.