The BTCC meeting yesterday was predictably excellent.
I really do love Thruxton. How can you not love a circuit where the commentator has to ask for results to be faxed over to him? How delightfully ramshackle.
More substantially, there are some great places to watch from, and you can get satisfyingly close to the track. The complex is still my favourite spot, and I’m sure it was busier this year – as was the whole event, it seemed.
It always strikes me as impressive that they organisers squeeze in ten races, and makes me wonder why more meetings can’t be like that.
The loss of Formula BMW UK is nothing to cry about; the Ginetta Junior Championship is an excellent addition to the bill. It’s incredible that the drivers are as young as 14, and Dino Zamparelli is very clearly one to watch for the future.
Formula Renault UK is now the only single seater race, and actually it’s not bad. The Porsche Carrera Cup GB is utterly irrelevant, with a tragically small entry list and little on-track action. Duncan Tappy’s progress did provide some interest though, so it wasn’t as painful to sit through as I expected.
The Seat Cupra Championship seems to be suffering some shrinkage, but they’re still fast cars driven by good drivers, so I’m not going to complain yet. The obvious star of the support races, though, is the Renault Clio Cup, with approximately eight hundred entrants, who were surprisingly well behaved – though not to say entirely well behaved. Ben Winrow is another driver bound to move on to bigger things soon.
Of course there were some British Touring Car Championship races too. The third race in particular seemed like a stormer, and I’m very much looking forward to eventually watching it on TV – which is always a sign of a good day at the races.
