Tough talking from Triple Eight on rear-wheel drive

Triple Eight team principal Ian Harrison says his team will be “forced” to switch to rear-wheel drive machinery unless what he called a “disparity” in the BTCC regulations is not addressed.

Harrison said the current NGTC regulations favour a well-developed rear-wheel drive machine, and a situation where several teams go down the rear-wheel drive route would lead to the championship not reflecting the automobile industry.

Harrison was speaking after an Oulton Park weekend where Jason Plato and Sam Tordoff struggled to match the West Surrey Racing BMWs, and also struggled to pass Rob Austin’s Audi A4.

Harrison said: “NGTC has been a great success in terms of giving teams the opportunity to compete in the BTCC. What has become clear however, is that as the cars have now been developed close to the maximum of their performance within the regulations, the NGTC technical regs favour a RWD platform.

“Naturally we will have to look to the future to see which RWD platforms are available to us because unless the disparity is addressed, we, like other teams, will certainly be forced down the RWD route. If other teams follow suit, the championship runs the risk of not reflecting the automobile industry which is predominantly FWD.”

Harrison’s words were echoed by Jason Plato, who nevertheless had a strong weekend in Cheshire.

He said: “It was good to get points, but we certainly didn’t expect to be so far off the BMWs. They were on a different level this weekend. There’s meant to be performance parity, but once again the rear-wheel drive cars streaked ahead at the start and into the distance.

“It’s a BMW championship, I’m afraid. We’ve reached the point where we can’t do any better because we’re not allowed to. When all the NGTC cars are developed, RWD is inherently better; better weight distribution, better traction. They need extra weight or a longer first gear. That’s not just based on today; it’s based on 20 years’ experience.

“I think they’ll win races everywhere, and with circuits such as Croft and Knockhill coming up, Colin [Turkington] could be way ahead come September.”

Sam Tordoff declared himself “happy-ish” with his weekend, which saw a trio of solid points finishes.

He said: “We scored good points, but we weren’t where we thought we would be. In previous years the MG has been the car to beat, so we went into the weekend thinking we’d be the benchmark, especially given the changes we made over the winter.

“However the BMWs were surprisingly quick and despite it being great to drive, the new layout didn’t allow for overtaking which made it quite a static race; the only real overtaking at the front was done at the start, by the BMWs and Audi.

“If it wasn’t for some bad luck in race two we would’ve had three top-six finishes, which I would’ve been happy with given the pace of the rear-wheel drive contingent. It wasn’t a bad weekend at all, but circumstances outside of our control stopped it being really good.”