It certainly looks like the British Touring Car Championship has hit the sweet spot. The maturing NGTC regulations together with the new TOCA BTCC Licence, guaranteeing entry for the next three seasons, has chucked up a bonza grid of 31 entries.

The return of champions Alain Menu and Fabrizio Giovanardi has been widely celebrated, and rightly so: it’s bloody wonderful to see drivers of international repute back in our great national championship. But it’s not all roses.

Mat Jackson was the final addition to the grid – and, unusually, the only driver to be announced at today’s season launch at Donington Park. He’s back with Airwaves Racing, and rightly so.

Less fortunate was Tom Onslow-Cole, who is sitting out the 2014 season, and looking for opportunities in sports car racing. Like Mat Jackson, he’s a talented driver who’s come up the TOCA support classes, and in recent years has looked like he’s just been waiting for that final piece to fall into place to mount a title challenge – like Andrew Jordan did last year.

He should be on the grid. That he isn’t, and Jackson evidently struggled, shows that despite the outward health of the championship, money still plays a much bigger role in who’s on the grid than it would in an ideal world.

Frank Wrathall had been in the same category as Jackson and Onslow-Cole, but his absence from the championship is an altogether different matter: he was jailed for 21 months last month after pleading guilty to causing death by careless driving. Which rather puts things into perspective.