Alan Gow projects 50% NGTC car field for 2012

BTCC Series Director Alan Gow believes up to 50% of the grid could be running the championship’s new Next Generation Touring Car platform cars next season after recent announcements from Honda, Eurotech and Triple Eight that they will switch in 2012.

The championship started out with three NGTC specification cars for the opening round at Brands Hatch Indy back in April, and since then has grown to five with an extra Audi A4 for Rob Austin Racing and Welch Motorsport joining after the mid-season break with a Proton Gen-2.

Thorney Motorsport hope to make it six for the season finale at Silverstone and will be unveiling their Vauxhall Insignia later in the week, whilst Team Dynamics are building the new Honda Civic to NGTC regulations for next year with Eurotech Racing and Triple Eight also confirming they’re going NGTC though are yet to announce with which models.

Recently the full NGTC cars have come on strong especially after the mid-season break, with independents’ class victories and podiums for both Frank Wrathall (Dynojet Racing Toyota) and Rob Austin (Rob Austin Racing Audi). But revisions to the boost settings on the NGTC teams’ cars dropped them down the order at the most recent round at the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, whilst other changes for the NGTC-powered S2000 cars from Rockingham have also brought the normally aspirated Chevrolets and BMWs closer to the front of the field.

“We always knew going into this year, when you’re going through a transition period you’re going to have to make those adjustments as you’re dealing with new regulations,” said Gow to TouringCarTimes.

“It’s required a constant review of adjustments but we’re always said that all the way along. No one ever thought we were going to have one set of regulations set in place for Brands Hatch and then not touch them. And it’s the same with the NGTC cars, as they’ve developed in the year we’ve made adjustments on those.”

Looking ahead to next season on the back of the recent announcements, Gow predicts a marked increase of NGTC specification cars next year and the possible dying out of cars running to FIA S2000 Appendix J 2010 regulations, that is, normally aspirated 2.0 litre cars.

“There’s a lot of very good teams out there that are going to build new cars and that’ll come out over the next few months, and I think I sort of predicted this at the beginning of the year but I think maybe next year 50% of the grid will be NGTC cars.”

“The guys running normally aspirated cars continually have seen they’re swinging against the tide…I think most of the people that are running normally aspirated cars have said ‘I don’t want to run them next year’, but that’s up to them, I’m certainly not banning them.”

Next year, a few teams are looking continue with S2000 specification cars fitted with NGTC engines, with Special Tuning Racing already confirming their plans to continue with the León, whilst West Surrey Racing are believed to be, like Geoff Steel Racing, fitting a turbocharged engine into their rear-wheel drive BMW 320sis.

The key unknowns are what the Chevrolet equipped teams will do, with Tech-Speed acquiring last year’s normally aspirated championship winning Cruzes from RML, and RML themselves still to confirm their intentions, though Managing Director George Lendrum and driver Jason Plato have both recently made indications that they will be building a turbo, with further speculation suggesting RML may even go the whole way and build a full NGTC-specification Cruze.

Motorbase Performance have put up for sale their three Ford Focus STs, acquired just at the beginning of the year, with Ford known to be pushing for them to switch to the New Focus for 2012 after another strong season for the Wrotham-based independent team, whilst the other Ford team Arena seek to jump to the World Touring Car Championship.

On the season long issue of which most drivers have been vocal, the ever changing weight and boost settings throughout the field, Gow adds:

“How wrong can it be, have a look how close the championship is, have a look how close the lap times are and you’d have to say it can’t be that far out.”

At Rockingham, Rob Austin lead the first race for an NGTC-specification car is his debut season in the championship and qualified third on the grid just over two-tenths of a second off of pole, though with the latest boost changes, Austin was 1.7 seconds off pole at Brands Hatch in 22nd (though the highest placed NGTC car was Dan Welch in 11th).

On whether Alan Gow believes the NGTC teams had perhaps become too competitive in recent meetings, Gow responded:
“You don’t know until something’s happened, you can’t pre-empt things. You can’t go to a race meeting saying ‘listen, we think your car is going to be too fast or too slow so we’re going to do this’, you have to respond, you can’t do anything in advance.”

“We haven’t over-reacted by going too crazy, and you’d have to have a look at it and think we’ve got it about right.”