The battle for the British Touring Car Championship goes down to the wire at Brands Hatch this weekend with WSR and BMW determined to win both the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ titles.
Two WSR drivers are among the six drivers in contention for the title with Jake Hill tied at the top of the points table and Colin Turkington 64 points behind with 67 available.
With BMW within four points of the lead of the Manufacturers’ Championship – which they are aiming to win for a record 10th time – there’s everything to play for on the legendary 2.6-mile Kent circuit.
“This isn’t our first title-decider and over the past 40-plus years we’ve been through every scenario and can use that experience to help us through what I’m sure will be a rollercoaster of a weekend,” commented Team Principal Dick Bennetts. “This is the BTCC, remember. Jake’s had a fantastic season and is, points-wise, our best-placed title contender, but having three fast drivers and cars near the front of the pack should help us quite a lot as we target the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ Championships for BMW and all of our partners.
“We’ve won 16 BTCC titles, many of which have come on finals day, and lost a few as well. One thing we’ve learnt is to never, ever, give up – we saw in 2019 in particular how important that is – and that’s a philosophy we’ll take into the weekend.”
Jake sits at the top of the standings, level on points with his closest rival but ahead on countback as he has won more races – seven – than anybody else this year aboard his BMW 330e M Sport.
The Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport driver, who lives near Brands Hatch, scored one of the most impressive of his 19 career wins last year in the season-ending event on the GP loop and was a double podium-finisher in 2022.
He is sure to have superb local support willing him on from the grandstands as he seeks to win WSR’s fifth BTCC Drivers’ crown and his first.
Nobody has won the BTCC title more often than Colin Turkington and the four-time champion has come to the season finale in contention for honours in seven of the eight seasons since he returned to the series with Team BMW in 2017.
All four of his championships were won at Brands Hatch with WSR; the drama of his 2009 success only exceeded by that of 10 years later as he went from ‘down and out’ at the start of Race Two to effectively winning the title on Race Three’s penultimate lap.
The Northern Irishman has won five times this year – a total he has beaten only twice in his BTCC career – and has been one of the series’ star performers since the summer break with two pole positions, two further front-row starts, three wins and six podiums.
He is a three-time winner on the longer Brands Hatch layout including a magnificent victory from 15th on the grid in 2017 that kept the title fight alive into the last race.
Colin’s Team BMW team-mate Adam Morgan has happy memories of the GP loop as it was the scene of his first BTCC race win in 2015.
The Lancashire racer, who has since taken his winning total to 11, will be one to watch as he sets his sights on equalling his best-ever seventh place in the points table; something he can achieve by outscoring his chief rivals five points over the weekend.
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