I don’t think there was a better race in 2009 than the title-deciding final round of the British Touring Car Championship, on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. So I thought I’d watch it again, and try to keep up with all the action. It wasn’t easy. An A4 pad was involved.

The grid was the easy part: Matt Neal, Paul O’Neill, Tom Chilton, Jonathan Adam, Rob Collard, Colin Turkington, Fabrizio Giovanardi, Jason Plato. The important facts were that the three title contenders started 6th, 7th and 8th, in their championship order, with Giovanardi’s team-mate Neal on pole position.

Lap 1 was a bit crazy: everyone overtook everyone (sort of), and Collard’s early off eventually brought out the safety car. At that point the top six was Neal, Turkington, Giovanardi, Chilton, Tom Onslow-Cole and Plato.

Neal – everyone’s favourite cartoon villain – was not keen to make a quick getaway at the restart on lap 4, instead driving slowly and defensively to force Turkington back into the clutches of Giovanardi. Giovanardi had a bit of a look, but that just gave Chilton a look at Giovanardi, while Turkington scampered away.

Lap 5 saw something of a repeat: Giovanardi had another go at Turkington, but this time it was distracting enough for Chilton to pass Giovanardi. By way of response, Giovanardi flashed his lights at Chilton. It was an ineffective comeback.

By lap 8, Plato had made his way up to 5th, behind Neal, Turkington, Chilton and Giovanardi. Giovanardi managed to get his revenge and pass Chilton; Plato followed Giovanardi through. Plato maintained momentum and got alongside Giovanardi, but it wasn’t enough to make the pass stick. Chilton’s backwards momentum continued, Gordon Shedden making a successful move on him too. Top six: Neal, Turkington, Giovanardi, Plato, Shedden, Chilton.

Lap 9 was key. Turkington made a move on Neal at Druids, and – six of one, half a dozen of the other – Neal ended up well onto the grass, with Turkington taking a quick excursion too. Turkington recovered to take the lead, while Neal rejoined in 3rd behind Giovanardi. Giovanardi immediately started stalking Turkington, and Chilton took his place back off Shedden. Plato overtook Neal, who ended up on the grass again. With Giovanardi continuing to stalk Turkington, Plato took Giovanardi over the line at the end of the lap.

Plato kept up the speed into lap 10, and took the lead from Turkington at the first corner. After all that, the top six was Plato, Turkington, Giovanardi, Chilton, Shedden and Jackson. Giovanardi lost out following an overtaking attempt yet again at the end of the lap: he had a go at Turkington, but lost out to Chilton. Chilton got alongside Turkington, but it wasn’t enough. So the top four was Plato, Turkington, Chilton and Giovanardi.

After that it calmed down a lot, the top four spacing out a bit, and Neal making his was back up to 5th. At the start of the final lap, Plato had a comfortable lead, with Turkington in 2nd closely followed by Chilton, then a gap back to Giovanardi, followed by his team-mate Neal. Chilton was threatening, and to keep the drama up Turkington’s exhaust was spitting flames, but it stayed like that over the finish line.

Reading that back, it’s amazing how many recoveries there were: Chilton was up and down the order like nobody’s business, Neal dropped back and recovered, and it’s almost unbelievable that Plato got up there to take the win. The other striking feature was the risk and reward of overtaking: there were many times that a driver dropped back having been disadvantaged by making an unsuccessful overtaking manoeuvre. With the title hanging in the balance on top of all that, it was a quite extraordinary race.

So there it is. 2009 was pretty bloody good, and hopefully 2010 will be too. Happy New Year.

Motorsport on TV in 2009 – that’s the theme for this last normal week of the year

Quantity over quality is a too harsh a way to describe ITV4‘s British Touring Car Championship coverage, but it is the sheer number of hours devoted to it – and its support series – which deserves most praise. How many other channels, not solely devoted to sport, would regularly give an entire afternoon over to broadcasting an entire race meeting? It’s sterling stuff.

But is it just me, or is Steve Rider a tiny bit dead inside? Maybe he’s been on TV so long that he can now do it with his eyes closed, so to speak. He doesn’t seem all there. Perhaps he’d rather be in a cosy studio above a football ground, than under a gondola at a race track.

Never mind. Ben Edwards and Tim Harvey are still very acceptable commentators, and the BTCC has thrown them plenty to get excited about. Especially at the last meeting of the year, which I really must get around to re-watching.

2010 will be the third year of ITV’s broadcast deal, so it should be more of the same. Which is to say: an awful lot.

There have been rumours for a good while that SEAT and BMW will scale back their World Touring Car Championship commitments, and on Friday autosport.com put some meat on the bones.

We already knew that SEAT will drop the the ORECA-run half of their presence, and the question now is whether there will be a works entry next year at all. We should find out soon, but series organisers are confident.

Moving on to BMW, it looks like the team that runs Andy Priaulx’s car, the excellently named Racing Bart Mampaey (or RBM if you want to be boring) will run two cars. Following the departure of Alex Zanardi, ROAL Motorsport isn’t expected to continue, and neither is Schnitzer Motorsport.

It’s what Schnitzer Motorsport is going to do that caught my eye. They could be a works BMW team in the VLN series. That’s VLN, or ‘Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring’ – yes, it’s German. Or ‘The Association of Nürburgring Endurance Cup Organisers’, in English, according to Wikipedia.

The actual series is the ‘BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring’, or ‘BFGoodrich Endurance Championship’, and takes place around the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife. DTM would seem like a more logical – and higher profile – move for Schnitzer and BMW, but also doubtless far more expensive – which is probably the point.

Anyway, reading more of the Wikipedia entry, it’s sounds quite interesting – six-hour races with driver changes, as well as shorter races. But then it goes mental, and claims that the final race of the year is known as the ‘Schinkenrennen’, or ‘Ham Race’.

I know the Germans love a bit of meat produce, but that, I reasoned, had to be a case of mischievous Wikipedia editing. After all, there’s no mention of ham in the calendar on the official website.

But no, delving a bit deeper, the final race of the season really is called that, and the winners do indeed receive an “original Westphalian ham” as part of their prize.

The closest thing I can think of in the UK is meat bingo. Not quite the same, is it? I do love Germany.

As predicted, the British Touring Car Championship has been pretty quiet since the end of the season. Oddly, it’s been BMW or nothing, news-wise.

There’s been testing for Motorbase, and also new team Forster Motorsport.

But most significantly, rear-wheel drive cars – i.e. the BMWs – are going to have a mandatory longer first gear, to remove their advantage off the start line.

I’m not keen on this at all. Front-wheel drive cars have a stability advantage – both in being able to recover from a spin, and generally in wet conditions – which remains.

There’s scope in touring car racing for measures to be put in place to stop a given car having a significant performance advantage. Which is fine. But only when it’s needed.

There’s an argument that other series have tackled the rear-wheel drive start line advantage. But if the front-wheel drive cars are competitive with the rear-wheel drive cars over the course of a season – which they were this year – then why change anything?

The BTCC is not the same as the WTCC, or another national series. Our tracks are quite unique; our weather is variable; and we have different manufacturers, including until now Vauxhall. Maybe some of that contributed to the virtual equality of front- and rear-wheel drive cars we saw over the 2009 season.

I just don’t see the logic for the change. If anything, the Chevrolet Lacetti needs holding back.

The FIA European Touring Car Cup seems like an appropriate place for James Thompson to have found outright success this year.

The bulk of his year has been spent in the Danish and British championships, with the odd bit of V8 Supercars in Australia and WTCC outings for Lada. His problem has been not doing all of any of it. So he’s possibly the most successful touring car driver in Europe, on aggregate, but without winning a national title.

He could have won the Danish Touring Car Championship, and indeed after five of the seven rounds had a healthy lead. But he missed the final two rounds due to preparations for the Bathurst race in Australia. His points lead was reduced after round six, and overhauled at the final meeting, ending up 3rd overall.

Thompson was late coming to the British Touring Car Championship, but managed to take three race wins in his six meetings. Could he have challenged for the title? The Honda Civic probably wouldn’t have been a match for the BMWs or Chevrolets, even with more preparation, but doubtless he could have been more of a threat.

The European Touring Car Cup, then. It’s an odd little end of season meeting, ostensibly for drivers from national touring car series. It’s a nice idea, if a little under-subscribed with only 11 Super 2000 competitors.

Thompson won it in his Danish Honda Accord, with a 3rd and a 1st, and Harry Vaulkhard represented the BTCC, picking up 5th and 6th place finishes. That gave Great Britain the Nations’ Cup, which is just splendid.

There are still a couple of World Touring Car Championship rounds left for Thompson, and having picked up his first points – a couple of 6th place finishes – at Imola last time out, the Lada looks to be improving nicely.

Where will Thompson be next year? The touring car world is rapidly changing, so nothing is particularly clear. Just in the WTCC: Seat are considering downsizing, Chevrolet are considering upsizing, BMW are considering whether it’s still the place to be, and Lada have to decide what to do with their new car. Then there’s everything that’s going on in the BTCC, and other national championships.

So in short: he could end up anywhere.

The FIA held a World Motor Sport Council yesterday, and calendars for pretty much all it’s championships came out of it.

It’s interesting to see where the British events stack up. It’s mainly not at Donington Park.

The Formula 1 calendar doesn’t specify venues, so it’s just Great Britain down for 11th July 2010, but the FIA will be working on the assumption that it is Donington Park. We shall see about that.

The standalone Formula Two round moves from Donington Park to Silverstone, which also hosts the new FIA GT1 World Championship. The World Touring Car Championship – with F2 in support – remains at Brands Hatch.

Away from the FIA, we know that A1GP won’t be visiting Britain in its fifth season. Since I last mentioned that sad fact, I’ve found this article from Kent News. In short, Brands Hatch decided against having A1GP back, due to the financial uncertainty of the series, and falling ticket sales for the event.

Brands Hatch does, however, appear on a provisional Superleague Formula calendar released yesterday, which was quickly retracted. Silverstone is the other British circuit on the possibly wrong calendar. Donington Park hosted the two previous British rounds of Superleague Formula.

MotoGP moves to Silverstone next year, so if the Formula 1 falls through for Donington Park, the only international event left there would be the Superbike World Championship.

Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. In Donington Park’s case, a really expensive basket that hasn’t been built yet.

The weekend was quiet in terms of motorsport on terrestrial television, but it was all going on in foreign lands. And we’ll be able to catch up eventually.

First and foremost, one of Scotland’s least recognised exports – and that’s official, it says so on the BBC – Dario Franchitti took the IndyCar Series title for the second time.

It was shown on Sky Sports, but that’s no use to the likes of me, who will have to wait until 4.20am on Thursday morning, when Five will be showing highlights. Intriguingly, it was the first IRL race without a single full-course yellow. Does that make it a more interesting race, or less? You tell me. Especially if you watched it.

The other big thing was in V8 Supercars, which held the Bathurst 1000 endurance race. It’s an event of sufficient significance to even appear on the front page of the BBC News website at one point last week, albeit not for the racing.

Sticking with the theme of successful but unrecognised Brits in motorsport, Andy Priaulx – probably slightly better known to the general public than Franchitti – took part, and clearly enjoyed it. He finished 11th.

It’s Five in the middle of the night again for the highlights, but I reckon they won’t be on for about a fortnight yet. That seems to be the sort of delay we get with V8 Supercars.

Given how late the BTCC grid was formed this year, it’s amazing that eyes are already on who will be where in 2010. I don’t think we’ll know much before February. But hey, it’s fun to speculate.

What we do know is that Vauxhall won’t be there, meaning there will be no manufacturers. Or does it?

EDIT: The quotes that follow come from Crash.net. Though I linked to the source material, as a commenter pointed out, I didn’t credit Crash.net in the text. Apologies for that.

Team Dynamics are working on getting more Honda involvement, so that’s one potential manufacturer. With no VX Racing, it looks like the boss’s son, Matt Neal, will come back to the team.

It’s interesting what Steve Neal has to say about other drivers. The Honda team could be the main project, with a Team Dynamics squad for those who want to “pay a lump sum and drive the car,” who Neal is “careful” to refer to as “amateurs”. Dave Pinkney, we’re looking at you. It would be interesting to have a clear distinction between those in a top team such as Dynamics on merit, and those, well, not.

Another potential manufacturer is Chevrolet, after the success RML had as Racing Silverline this season with Jason Plato and Mat Jackson in the Lacetti. But theories around this are mixed.

Steve Neal is under the impression that “the Lacettis are pretty much sold,” and a big sponsor would be needed for RML to run the Cruze in the BTCC, as it has been in the WTCC this season.

Jason Plato, meanwhile, seems more optimistic. The least he’s hoping for is as this year, with sponsors he’s worked with personally, and potentially the Cruze. But with Vauxhall both out of the championship and no longer part of GM, Plato says there’s “a great opportunity” for manufacturer backing from Chevrolet.

Then, like last year, there’s the chance that Volvo could come to the British championship. Plato is still involved in that project: “I have first option on the number one seat there.” So that’s the third potential manufacturer we know about.

What about other teams? Having won the championship, hopefully WSR will be back in the guise of Team RAC.

Similarly, it would be a shame if Motorbase didn’t return as Airwaves BMW. There has to be a question mark over Airwaves though, the company having already announced that it will not continue its sponsorship of championship winners GSE Racing in British Superbikes.

Having developed the Ford Focus into a front-running car, Team Aon, run by Arena, are already talking about winter development and next year, so signs are that they should be on the grid.

Similarly positive noises are coming from bamboo engineering, having obtained a second Lacetti to run alongside that of Harry Vaulkhard next year.

But after the late drop-outs and late entrants this season, I’m taking nothing for granted until we see the cars on the grid at Thruxton next April.

The 2009 British Touring Car Championship finished at the weekend, and already the 2010 calendar has been announced.

We start at Thruxton next year instead of Brands Hatch. The two visits to Brands Hatch remain, but with the Grand Prix track in May, and the season finale around the Indy circuit. That’s a slight disappointment: it seems fitting for the season to build up to a climax at a special circuit, which Brands Hatch GP definitely is. And of course it proved the perfect way to end the season this year.

The Donington Park meeting has moved back to September so that it doesn’t get in the way of preparations for the Formula 1. Assuming that actually goes ahead there.

The summer break will be a huge seven weeks. That’s apparently for the aforementioned British F1 GP (wherever it is), Football World Cup, and Tour de France.

The Tour de France is presumably taken into account at the request of ITV, since ITV4 shows both. Incidentally, the three year mass coverage deal with ITV4 enters its final year in 2010, unless of course it is extended. Which I think we’d all like to see, wouldn’t we? I’m not sure even Eurosport or Eurosport 2 could devote as many hours to the championship as ITV4 have.

It looks promising for an extension, I reckon. It’s already been announced that ITV4 will again be showing British Superbikes highlights next year – and sooner after the meeting than this year – so there are no obvious signs of ITV shrinking its motorsport quota.

Following the #BTCC feed on Twitter during yesterday’s final race of the British Touring Car Championship season, the animosity towards VX Racing, and Matt Neal in particular, was incredible. The reason? Team orders: Matt Neal was charged with holding up Team RAC‘s Colin Turkington to give his VX Racing team-mate Fabrizio Giovanardi a chance of overtaking and sealing the championship.

Team orders was the exact reason that Team RAC brought in Anthony Reid to boost their squad to three cars, after VX Racing put their other two drivers behind Giovanardi. VX Racing were much better at using such tactics, but happily the championship didn’t come down to that.

It begs the question: what will we, the fans, accept in the way of team orders?

Neal’s snail-pace driving in the lead of the third race yesterday frustrated me as much as anyone. But I had no problem with Dani Sordo slowing down in the Spanish round of the World Rally Championship at the weekend to let Sebastien Loeb take the rally win.

The difference, I suppose, is who is being disadvantaged by the team orders.

If it’s another member of the same team, as in the case of Sordo and Loeb, then I don’t have any particular objection. It’s not great, but in a team sport, it’s to be expected. What I don’t like seeing is a team order to disadvantage a competitor, as in the case of Neal and Turkington. That’s just not fair, is it?

But even team orders that only affect the same team can be objectionable if they’re extreme.

Perhaps the most famous example of recent years was Rubens Barrichello moving over for Ferrari team-mate Michael Schumacher in the last stretch of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix. The lot of them were fined for the ridiculous scenes on the podium, when Schumacher pushed Barrichello up to the top step of the podium, but the team orders were perfectly legal. Fans were outraged by the blatent nature of the orders though, and the fiasco led to the ‘banning’ of team orders in Formula 1. Mind you, in practice it just means that teams have to be more subtle about it.

There was a perhaps even more blatent display earlier this year in one of the Portugese rounds of the World Touring Car Championship. The BMWs of Andy Priaulx and Jorg Muller dropped right back out of the points from 4th and 7th respectively, just so that Augusto Farfus, the top BMW in the championship, could pick up a single point for 8th. It was ludicrous.