As has become traditional, the BTCC grid is forming pretty slowly, such is the difficulty in securing a budget. It’s starting to come together now, but I always find it intriguing that the grid in British Superbikes takes shape so much sooner.

Anyway, Wikipedia is pretty good at keeping up with who’s confirmed. But there are – hopefully, if we want a healthy grid – still an awful lot of unknowns.

Most of the pieces should be in place by the time of the official media day – which this year is at Silverstone on 24th March. But until then, this is my modest wish list for the season ahead.

Colour

Collectively, the 2010 liveries were bland: too many cars were mainly black or white, with little more than a bit of blue or red. Seriously, have a look. It was only really Silverline Chevrolet (light blue), Pinkney Racing (pink, obviously), and Pirtek Racing (garish) going out on a limb.

Oh, for the days of Team Halfords and Team RAC – both in slightly different, but equally pleasing, shades of orange. At least we got a bit of orange in 2010 when Daniel Lloyd did a few races for Triple Eight. And it looks like the new Dynojet team will have a bit of sort of orange on their Toyota Avensis in 2011. So all is not lost.

But what about other colours? Maybe someone should take inspiration from Team Atomic Kitten and splash a bit of yellow around. Now that was a livery.

Foreigners

Yes, it’s the British Touring Car Championship. But I can’t help feeling that the lack of any foreign drivers last year – other than Fabrizio Giovanardi at the season opener – took a little bit of the shine off the series. A national championship with international drivers is that one notch higher on the world stage.

I’m not sure who we might expect to descend on this fair isle, mind you – mainly because most international drivers would probably want paying. Paying! Ha! Nice one.

Not even good old Erkut Kizilirmak came back after taking a ‘year out’ in 2009.

Regulations & Equalisation

The trio of regulations in the BTCC this year – NGTC, S2000 and BTC – could be a recipe for disaster. Or more specifically, a recipe for a whole lot of whinging about the attempted equalisation of those different regulations, and how terribly unfair it all is. Naming no names. Jason Plato.

As if that’s not enough variation, it looks like most entries will be a combination of two of those regulations: a S2000 chassis with an NGTC engine. The Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Vauxhall Vectra, Seat Leon and Volkswagen Golf will all fall into that category.

The various Toyota Avensis entries, and the Rob Austin Racing Audi A4 will be pure NGTC; RML and WSR are expecting to run fully S2000 Chevrolet Cruze and BMW 320si respectively; and Lea Wood has confirmed that he’ll be back in a BTC-spec Honda Integra.

But even the NGTC engine in isolation isn’t straightforward – there will be a number of bespoke efforts, and they will have to have parity with the TOCA unit built by Swindon Engines. At least it looks like the waters won’t be further muddied by LPG or diesel engines this year.

And there’s always going to be contention around front- and rear-wheel drive. Rob Austin Racing’s Audi A4 is confirmed to be rear-wheel drive, as doubtless the BMW 320si will be. Will the Audi have a long first gear imposed on it, like the BMWs did last year? Presumably.

So: no moaning about all that, please. Just get it right in the first place – I’m looking at you, Alan Gow – and let us enjoy the racing.