BTCC’s – All about car

It’s mild and overcast at Thruxton circuit near Andover, Hampshire. The Met Office says afternoon rain is a 25% possibility. The usual dedicated crowd is pouring in for the third British Touring Car Championship meeting of the year – which means they’ll be seeing races seven, eight and nine of the series. Today’s field has 30 cars divided among 10 marques, and following yesterday’s flat-out qualifying the first 20 are crammed inside one second. The field contains five former champions and 18 previous race winners, so tremendous racing isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s guaranteed. Today’s average speed will be 110mph-plus, and the cars will hit 155mph through Church corner, the fastest on the circuit. At Thruxton, there’s only ever one tyre compound used: hard. Given the guarantee of great racing, it’s ironic that we’re not here to watch it. Our mission is to discover how this event – like the rest of 2019’s 10 BTCC meetings – will be covered for an off-site ITV audience that usually builds to around a million a race if you aggregate audiences from the real-time race programme, highlights and online coverage. We’re spending the day with TV anchorman Steve Rider, the face of televised BTCC for at least a quarter-century and a nationally recognised sports-programme personality since the 1970s when he sprang to prominence on BBC Grandstand and Sports Personality of the Year. Nowadays, the BTCC is Rider’s biggest gig and he pulls it off with a professional ease admired by everyone else in the same game. My first call is the TOCA tent, prominent in the paddock just behind the ancient, creaky Thruxton race tower to which BTCC series supremo Alan Gow once ironically attached a fake British Heritage plaque. It’s still there. Gow has a reputation for running a tight ship and for being affable and direct – except when it’s necessary not to be affable. Behind the tent is the more exclusive and mysterious TOCA bus, to which errant drivers are summoned after ‘infringements’. Gow and a panel of experts use it to dispense brisk justice. “Steve’s already here,” Gow tells me over a quick cup of tea. “He always arrives early. Probably in the truck.” The truck is shorthand for the £2 million outside broadcast units on site, stuffed with screens, control panels and preoccupied people, and united by cables as thick as the hawsers that hold the Ark Royal to a dockside. Today, there will be a remarkable six and three-quarter hours of live or as-live TV on ITV4 – precisely timed to run between 11.13am and 5.59pm provided there are no crash delays. These happen often enough for Rider and crew to be well used to making changes on the hoof, even though they start out with a painstakingly written 38-page script with breaks scheduled to the second. ITV has about 15 people on site. Everyone except Rider and his immediate crew will stay in the trucks and orchestrate coverage of the day’s three BTCC races but also the supporting Ginetta Juniors, F4 single-seaters and Mini Se7ens whose TV timings get shifted about to cover pauses for accident clear-ups. We run Rider to earth in a seasoned Mercedes Sprinter production unit parked just behind the control tower, adjacent to the starting grid. He uses it for preparing, interviewing people, writing bits of script that might be needed, talking back and forth to colleagues in the bigger trucks, grabbing lunch or a coffee and generally holding himself ready for anything. Today, he will mostly dive back and forth between track and van, with occasional transmissions from a rickety race commentator’s gantry above the van. Rider turns out to be a thoroughly nice guy, friendly in the way of a person who meets far more people in a week than he could ever remember. He greets us with the famous smile and then, in that egalitarian TV way, introduces everyone else – the director, the cameraman, the sound man and the guy who always walks backwards with a video screen strapped to his chest so Rider and the director, David Francis, can see exactly what’s being transmitted. The small team has been briefed about our presence and is cool. I’m keen to get Rider talking about the slings and arrows of the job – he has a huge reputation for being nerveless in really difficult situations – but he’s not a man to spin yarns. We chat about cars, the weather and Formula 1 (he was anchor to commentating legend Murray Walker), but hardly a syllable passes about the rigours of commentary. “I guess you see most things, over the years,” he says mildly. “You learn to survive them.” Good commentators, Rider believes, aren’t part of the story. He’s a bit preoccupied just now, anyway, because today’s 406-minute magnum opus is getting close. There are intro pieces and links to prepare before transmission starts at 11.13am and it’s already 10.30am. Rider also has a couple of friends along for the day and they deserve a walk through the grid. Five people are involved in presenting
Origin: Lights, camera, action: shadowing the BTCC’s TV crew

The Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship’s tightly controlled technical regulations are a key reason it regularly produces such exciting racing – and ensuring its ultra-competitive teams play by those rules is a tough job. The BTCC has a small group of technical experts at each race to make sure that happens. This year, they’ve got a new home: the TOCA Technical Centre, a newly finished truck unit that travels to every race with all the equipment needed to run a BTCC race weekend. That includes all of the technical kit, the BTCC’s bespoke signage, event branding and even photographer Jakob Ebrey’s stepladder. Once the equipment is set up, the truck effectively becomes the technical team’s mobile command unit, where they can analyse data and samples in order to police the rules. The mammoth truck replaces two smaller vehicles and has, technical director Peter Riches says, taken the championship “to the next level”. For example, it has an in-built radio unit and mast, used to run the communications network. Previously, that unit had to be assembled on top of the tallest building at each circuit. At a cost of around £250,000, the Hopkins Motorsport-prepared unit has been fitted with state-of-the-art kit, including Getrac laptops and tablets. It means Riches, his son Sam and Phil Danbury, both BTCC technical commissioners, and their team instantly have the information they need – and the evidence that makes winning arguments with teams easier. Here’s what goes on inside it. In-car footage Every car has an on-board CCTV camera so that stewards can rule on any incidents and footage saved to memory cards is downloaded and collected here. ITV is also provided with the footage when needed. Logistics and communication A vast amount of paperwork, such as technical bulletins, is produced on race weekends and Josie is the key assistant who sorts most of it. She also performs other vital roles, such as co-ordinating the reverse grid draw for the final race. Main room Peter, Sam and Phil are based in the main office, where they can use two TVs to check timing, footage and technical data, which can be synced from any of the Getrac laptops. This is also where team bosses are summoned to explain themselves to the scrutineers. If you’re summoned here, you’re likely in trouble. Fuel analysis Carless supplies a single control fuel for the whole BTCC package. Samples are taken from cars at random and checked against a chemical ‘map’ to ensure the right fuel is being used. The system has an accuracy of 99.95%. Head injury research Emily and Lauren, students from the University of Bolton’s National Centre for Motorsport Engineering, are working on an FIA head injury research project, using acceleration data from chips in drivers’ radio earpieces. Engine data BTCC cars use on-board Cosworth electronic systems. All the data gathered, including revs, gears and overboost levels, is saved to a memory card and then downloaded by a Cosworth engineer. The system detects and highlights results that require further investigation. Spot checks During practice and qualifying, the technical team set up at the start of the pit lane and perform random spot checks – and, despite rumours, the checks genuinely are random – on cars. It’s all controlled by ‘Sam’s Tardis’, the name given to the station where Sam Riches is based. He controls the lights that signal to pitting cars whether they have to stop for checks. As cars enter the pit, a scanner detects RFID chips in their tyres, ensuring they match the sets assigned to them. Those pulled over then have their ride height checked before being weighed, with the results instantly available on Sam’s tablet. During practice, the teams are ‘advised’ of any failures and allowed to carry on, but those found to have broken the rules in qualifying have their times stripped. The tools used mix high-tech with pure ingenuity: the flat scales cost around £15,000 a set, while ride height is checked with a specially modified paint
Origin: Behind the scenes at the BTCC’s mobile technical centre