The bitchiest paddock in motorsport?

The Motorsport Journal looks at the British Touring Car Championship, where grudges last 20 years and the fans love it.

The irony was lost on nobody. When an incensed Jason Plato launched into a tirade against Aron Smith following a clash at Knockhill in 2012 – claiming that “either he did it on purpose and wanted to take me out, or it was an accident and he needs to have his licence taken away” – he could hardly have known that just a few years down the line in his hour of need, it would be Smith, now part of the same Team BMR stable, that Plato would have to rely on for help in the title showdown at Brands Hatch.

Perhaps in light of Plato’s comments at Knockhill, what happened next shouldn’t come as a surprise. Whilst Matt Neal, team-mate to Plato’s chief rival Gordon ‘Flash’ Shedden, played ball, Smith chose to ignore radio messages and held position in race one – taking valuable points away from Plato – before making his team-mate work far harder to pass him than appeared necessary in race two. Afterwards, a seething Plato said Smith had “probably got himself the sack”, but rightly or wrongly, it’s hard to imagine the Northern Irishman loosing much sleep over it.  

Smith found himself at the centre of a team orders storm at Brands Hatch (Jakob Ebrey).

Welcome to the British Touring Car Championship; an arena where grudges can last for years, and form a central part of the attraction. Indeed, the mainstream appeal of the championship today can be traced back to the bad-tempered 1992 finale at Silverstone, which saw Vauxhall’s John Cleland pitched against BMW’s Tim Harvey. 

Cleland carried a slender three point advantage, but Harvey had a trump card – his team-mate Steve Soper. After being spun around on the first lap by David Leslie and then hit by Robb Gravett, Soper’s battered wreck charged back through the field, passing both championship protagonists before slowing to allow Harvey past. Sensing the championship slipping through his fingers, Cleland lunged up the inside into Brooklands, mounting the kerb on two wheels and forcing Soper wide, but the BMW man would have none of it and charged them both off the circuit at Luffield. Even today, Soper and Cleland still disagree over who was at fault, but Harvey was the champion, and the BTCC’s ‘boys have at it’ philosophy was born.

But unlike other racing series that would attempt to distance itself from the controversy, the BTCC is proud of its heritage – Harvey remains involved as a commentator on its flagship ITV4 coverage – and actively caters to the fans’ demand for close racing with a format of three short sprint races, the third of which is reversed and typically produces drama aplenty as the faster cars work their way toward the front.

Two-time champion Plato, the winningest driver in series history on 94 and counting, is one of only two drivers in series history to have won all three races at the same meeting, but for all his success is probably most revered as the BTCC’s token ‘bad boy’. As Smith and countless other have found out, Plato is not afraid to say what is on his mind or provoke his opponents – so irking arch-rival Neal at Rockingham in 2011 that the lanky Brummie threatened to “rip [his] f***ing face off”.

Plato enjoys a huge following (Jakob Ebrey).

A man for whom the term ‘marmite character’ could have been invented, Plato knows every trick in the book, and then some. He’s been banging panels with Neal since the heady days of Super Touring in the late 90s and had more run-ins over the years than anyone might care to put a figure on, but works harder than anybody for his following – comfortably the biggest in the BTCC if Twitter is anything to judge by and at 97.7k, higher than Neal, Shedden and 2014 champion Colin Turkington put together. While his profile can partly be attributed to a spell presenting Fifth Gear on Channel Five, it also attests to the fans’ desire to back a personality.

The BTCC certainly isn’t lacking for those. Alongside Plato and Neal – a three-time champion and veteran of 25 seasons in the BTCC – there’s the star billing of Andy Prialux MBE, who returned to the series this year after winning the World Touring Car Championship three times in succession between 2005 and 2007, uncompromising demolition man Rob Collard, a former hot rod racer who is one of the best overtakers in the business, aviator-wearing seventies throwback Rob Austin, who campaigns an Audi he fondly calls ‘Sherman’ and Adam Morgan, who won a bet with his Ciceley Racing tyre man to get a tattoo – of himself – on his leg.

Former rallycrosser Andrew Jordan put his name in the history books in 2013 by winning the championship with his family-run Eurotech team and says the key to winning over the fans is just to be yourself.

“The biggest thing is you’ve got to be genuine,” says Jordan, who will campaign a Motorbase Ford in 2016. “A few people but on a bit of an act during a touring car weekend, but I don’t understand that. If you’re genuine, you make the odd funny comment or a little bit of controversy, they will buy into that because it’s something they can relate to straight away. If you’re not a funny guy then don’t try to be, you just look like an idiot.

Mid-pack action in the BTCC is always frantic (Jakob Ebrey).

“I’ve had a few words with people, but I’ve never had a big thing with anyone. I think it’s good for the championship if it’s a genuine rivalry – probably the most famous one is Matt and Jason just because they’ve been around for so long – and the grudges just add a bit more spice to it because people can jump on it and get involved, but if it’s not real then I think it’s pointless. The funny thing with Twitter these days is you get so many people saying stuff because they’re behind a screen or behind a keyboard that they wouldn’t say to someone’s face.

“I don’t hide away from confrontation, but if someone’s fired me off into the gravel then going down there and having a shouting match probably won’t achieve anything, it will just wind me up even more. If you’ve got a genuine reason to go and speak to them then great – and if it’s live on TV that’s even better because it’s funny to watch – but sometimes it can get a bit handbags at dawn and when you look back on it you look very silly.”

Jordan kicked off his title year with a somewhat ambitious lunge on Plato for the lead at the final corner, taking both men into the gravel – although it ultimately had no bearing on the final result. Jordan points out that the physical nature of touring car racing means the truly successful drivers will inevitably get into scrapes at some point, but it pays not to have too many enemies that will make it difficult when it really counts; Turkington won his first title in 2009 after a fraught, but respectful battle with Fabrizio Giovanardi’s Vauxhall, while Jordan himself had to rely on the compliance of his rivals coming from the back of the grid after suffering broken suspension earlier in the day.

Jordan triumphed in the gloom in 2013 (Jakob Ebrey).

“I think [Brands 2013] was water under the bridge because we still finished in the order we’d been running; if Jason had been buried in the gravel and I’d won, I think it would have been a completely different story!” he laughs.

“I remember when I had to come through the field I was quite glad I hadn’t upset too many people that year because they will give you a little bit more room when there’s so much at stake, but if you’re going to be in the hunt for championships you can’t be thinking about not upsetting people. You need to be going for moves and if you elbow someone off and it upsets them you can’t be worrying about that.”

If you could sum the BTCC up in a nutshell, that might just be it.