There’s a lot of running away with championships going on this year, but not all of it is as clear cut as the results suggest. Here are six degrees of motorsport domination so far in 2014.

6. KTM – Moto3

It’s a remarkable record: a KTM-engined bike has won every Moto3 race since July 2012, and a KTM chassis every race since September 2012.

Though 2013 was a year of utter domination for KTM, 2014 hasn’t been the whitewash – six wins from six – that it looks like. Were it not for some cracking rides from Jack Miller and Romano Fenati – topping the points table as it stands – Honda would by now have secured a win or two at the hands of Alex Rins (third on points), Efren Vazquez or Alex Marquez.

The Honda is now a match for the KTM, and Miguel Oliveira on the Mahindra can’t be entirely discounted as an outside bet. It’s only a matter of time until KTM’s winning streak comes to an end.

Domination: cracked

5. Shane Byrne – British Superbikes

Shane Byrne has won three of the first four races in British Superbikes this year, and came second in the other. It’s a storming start, giving him a 30 point championship lead on 95 points.

But with those four races at only two meetings, there’s an awful lot of the season to come. There are consistent riders behind him too: Josh Brookes has a win and two second places, a retirement costing him dearly in the points standings; James Ellison has finished third in every race.

It’s too early to say that Byrne will dominate, then, but it’s clear where the sensible money is.

Domination: to be established

4. Mercedes – Formula 1

The Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid hasn’t finished a race outside the top two so far in 2014. Until last weekend, it seemed completely believable that it could win every race.

Reliability at the Canadian Grand Prix put paid to that though, and Daniel Ricciardo took the first non-Mercedes win of the season for Red Bull.

But there’s no sign that the other teams are in danger of catching – let alone overtaking – Mercedes on performance. So with 258 points and a 119 point lead in the constructors championship, and a similar advantage in the drivers table, it’s going to take a lot more unreliability for anyone other than Mercedes to have a look in when the big prizes are handed out at the end of the year.

Domination: probably in tact

3. Citroen – WTCC

Citroen have definitely ‘done a Volkswagen’: entered a world championship, thrown time and money at the project, and blown the competition – with little or waning manufacturer support – away.

They were never going to win every race of the season, with a reverse grid for the second race of each meeting, and the penalties for success that are usual for touring car racing. But even before the season started, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that one of the Citroen drivers would come out world champion.

And so it has worked out so far: Citroen have won 11 of the 12 races, and comfortably occupy the top three spots in the championship table. It’s not all predictable though: not many would have Jose Maria Lopez leading the standings by 41 points from Yvan Muller and Sebastien Loeb.

Domination: convincing, but not complete

2. Volkswagen – WRC

Volkswagen have won each of the first six rallies of the year, and there’s every chance that run will continue.

They also won all but three rallies in 2013, in their first year. Sebastien Loeb won two of those three, but he’s out of the way now, part of Citroen’s domination of the WTCC.

The competition are looking only intermittently threatening, with a smattering of podium finishes scattered amongst the Citroen, M-Sport and Hyundai runners. Citroen’s Mads Ostberg has been most consistent, but has less than half the points of inevitable championship leader Sebastien Ogier.

Volkswagen might not win every rally this season – reliability and bad luck always come knocking eventually in rallying – but it’s almost inconcieveable that they – and Ogier specifically – won’t be on top come the end of the season.

Domination: highly efficient

1. Marc Marquez – MotoGP

One man, though, has dominated domination so far in 2014. As if taking the MotoGP title on his first attempt in 2013 wasn’t enough, Marc Marquez has won all of the first six races of 2014, to collect a perfect 150 points. His closest rival is Valentino Rossi, on 97.

The first four races of the year were pretty straightforward for the ludicrously talented Spanish child, who has been excellently described as the Predator, in reference to the ‘aliens’ tag that has been used in recent years for the frontrunning set of MotoGP riders.

Then in France he made it hard for himself by dropping back to 10th at the start, but it didn’t take long to find his way to the front, ultimately taking victory by 1.5 seconds.

And in Italy, someone finally made it hard for Marquez. Jorge Lorenzo – hopefully a now resurgent Jorge Lorenzo – challenged him race-long in a superb battle for the win. Marquez ultimately triumphed, by just 0.121 seconds.

But he did win. Again. When will it end? No-one knows.

Domination: frightening

This year’s BTCC grid is remarkably good looking. It hasn’t always been; I still haven’t quite recovered from Jeff Smith’s 2011 livery. But this year’s cars are an impressively professional looking bunch.

Top of the pile in my world are newcomers United Autosports, who’ve come straight in with a couple of bloody smart looking cars in red, white and blue.

Fellow new team Rotek Racing have also shown up the established teams something rotten with this classy Oakley-sponsored effort.

Somewhat further up the colour spectrum, the third Motorbase Focus, run as Crabbie’s Racing, certainly stands out. And I like it for that.

An honourable mention must also go to Wix Racing, for refining their livery into a very tidy yellow effort. It looks good on the Mercedes-Benz A Class, doesn’t it?

Finally, the MG. Remarkably, they’ve come up with an even more elaborate team name: MG KX Momentum has become MG KX Clubcard Fuel Save. So, in effect, still ‘MG Tesco Tesco’. Like 2013 – and unlike 2012 – it looks fine.

Photo Credits
United Autosports: United Autosports – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Rotek Racing: Rotek Racing
Crabbie’s Racing: Pranavian – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Wix Racing: Bryan Janes – Flickr – Some rights reserved
MG: Bryan Janes – Flickr – Some rights reserved

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.

It didn’t look promising…

In the early part of the BTCC off-season, I wasn’t desperately optimistic about 2013. My interest waned over the course of 2012: it was great to have a new champion in Gordon Shedden, but there was too much amateurish behaviour going on.

A couple of early announcements didn’t exactly convince me that 2013 would see a return to, you know, proper racing. Switching turbo boost adjustment from car type to individual teams smacks of penalising not mechanical advantage, but success – which success ballast already does. And I’m not convinced that the soft compound tyre, to be used in one of the three races each weekend, will see much variation in strategy.

…but as the winter went on (and on and on, in the UK)

Things got better, starting with news of a new grid penalty after any three driving offences. And the picture only got brighter.

Team and driver announcements came, if not thick and fast, then consistently at least – more so than in previous years. And with them – sponsors! Look at the entry list, and there are sponsors all over the team names. This is healthy – if a little confusing in the case of ‘PPCGB.com / Kraftwerk Racing’, run by Rob Austin Racing, and nothing to do with the German electro-pioneers.

Those daring (young?) men in their racing machines

Jason Plato and Matt Neal remain the big hitters on the grid, but after Gordon Shedden’s success last year, and the very welcome return of Colin Turkington, there are four champions on the grid. For my money, at least three other drivers should be aiming to take the fight to them: Tom Onslow-Cole, Mat Jackson and Andrew Jordan.

Those seven drivers alone, spread over six teams, will be racing five different makes of car. The grid as a whole features 11 makes and 13 models. That’s a great achievement for a national championship, and hugely encouraging for the NGTC regulations.

There are plenty of other drivers to watch among that capacity 32 car grid: young race winners (Frank Wrathall, Aron Smith); not-so-young race winners (Rob Collard, Dave Newsham); fan favourites (Rob Austin); promising newcomers (Jack Goff, Sam Tordoff).

I’m a little surprised by the Jack Sears Trophy for S2000 cars though. It would have been nice – and made sense, to my mind – to see the ‘business class’ drivers step aside a little and concentrate on the lesser prize. Though some have – Liam Griffin for example – with so few entrants, it would appear that the Trophy is one of the less successful changes to the championship.

Ooh, look at the pretty colours

Perhaps the best news from the BTCC media day last week was that MG KX Momentum Racing – or ‘MG Tesco Tesco Racing’ as I prefer – have changed their livery. Last year’s was borderline offensive, but clearly over the winter an adult noticed what they did and made them change it. The new eBay Motors BMW 1 Series was the other livery highlight.

Glued to the box

The most encouraging news for the future of the BTCC was the extension of the ITV broadcasting deal to at least 2017. The current health of the championship is founded on the remarkable seven hours of live coverage of every meeting on ITV4, giving the BTCC and its support series virtually unrivalled exposure on free-to-air television.

It works for both sides: it gives ITV an audience it struggles to attract elsewhere – men; and it gives sponsors a large population of eyeballs. That it will continue ought to give teams and sponsors confidence to invest in the series.

Incidentally, British Formula Ford strikes me as an excellent addition to the support bill – for that championship, and the TOCA package.

And finally, a prediction

Plato.

Photo Credits
Toyotas: Toyota UK – Flickr – Some rights reserved
All Others: Rob Dunckley – Flickr – Some rights reserved

This tweet, during the opening round of the BTCC season at Brands Hatch a fortnight ago, got me thinking:

Plato is very ironically named really. He could do with thinking things through a bit sometimes. #BTCC

— Peter Allen (@PeteAllen_) April 1, 2012

The BTCC continues this weekend at Donington Park, so I thought I’d answer the question we’re all asking: how does Jason Plato compare to Plato?

	Plato	Jason Plato
Born	Sometime between 429 and 423 BC, probably in Athens or Aegina, Greece.	14th October 1967, in Oxford, England.
Education	Student of Socrates, mentor to Aristotle. Founded the Academy in Athens, the Western world’s first institution of higher learning.	Public school educated at The King’s School, Tynemouth. Former BTCC and WTCC driver Harry Vaulkhard – now in the Euro Racecar Series, incidentally – also went there.
Achievements	Helping to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.	Twice BTCC champion, in 2001 and 2010. 1996 Renault Spider Cup champion, 1991 Formula Renault Eurocup champion.
Works	36 dialogues and 13 letters, on subjects including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics.	A weekly column in The Sun; Fifth Gear for Channel 5, Driven for Channel 4, Mission Implausible for Sky One. Mainly on the subject of cars, though the latter on the subject of stunts.
Criticism	Carl Sagan: “Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato’s followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians.”	Just keep an eye on #BTCC on Twitter on a race weekend and you’ll see plenty. Generally not quite as eloquent as Carl Sagan, mind.

Quite similar, then.

Credits
Source: Wikipedia. For everything. Always.
Plato photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen – Wikimedia Commons – Some rights reserved
Jason Plato photo: CraigMoulding – Flickr – Some rights reserved

I don’t know about you, but if someone makes no effort with me, then I’m not inclined to make much effort with them. I think that’s where I am with the WTCC.

I don’t want to seem petty. I was moderately excited about the glamorous-sounding World Touring Car Championship when it was resurrected in 2005, and enthusiastically went along to the race at Silverstone that year. I followed it reasonably closely on Eurosport when I had the channel, and thereafter made an effort to catch the highlights on ITV4.

That changed last year, when the WTCC disappeared from free-to-air TV in the UK. That continues this year. But also this year, for the first time, there’s no race in the UK. Ever get the feeling you’re not loved?

National vs International

Perhaps that’s part of the reason that, as new WTCC pitlane reporter Ben Constanduros intimated, the UK holds the BTCC in higher regard. It might not be objectively fair, but it’s obvious why: the cars are ostensibly identical, so the racing looks the same, but the BTCC is broadcast live on free-to-air TV and tours UK circuits.

Is it a coincidence that Germany, home to the DTM, also has no WTCC race?

The fact is, the WTCC doesn’t really care about the UK – or probably Germany for that matter. It’s far more interested in emerging markets – and if that’s what the championship’s stakeholders want, then fair enough.

After all, it’s not the only series to desert the UK this year: the Silverstone round of the free-to-attend World Series by Renault clearly wasn’t doing enough for Renault’s UK sales figures.

National to International

But what’s vaguely surprising to me is that the WTCC seems to hold a significant appeal for British drivers. No less than four are moving across from the BTCC this year: Tom Chilton, James Nash, Alex MacDowall and the returning Tom Boardman.

It’s perhaps not a given that Nash and MacDowall are moving entirely by choice. But Chilton’s Team Aon and Boardman’s Special Tuning Racing are moving and expanding respectively into the WTCC, so it’s clear that the world stage is where they want to be.

That’s despite the WTCC being basically invisible in the UK compared to the BTCC.

Shame

With so much British interest, I want to be more enthusiastic about the WTCC season ahead. It should be fascinating to see how they all get on; MacDowall is already making headlines in testing.

But the WTCC makes it so damned difficult to be enthusiastic. Shame, that.

Photo Credit
Jens / mautau – Flickr – Some rights reserved

The BTCC made a bit of a thing recently of tickets for all this season’s meetings now being on sale.

That got me wondering about how much motorsport tickets vary in price. As is my wont at such times, research and a little visualisation followed. Not every venue has every event on sale yet – for example British F3 & GT meetings aren’t all available yet – so I’ve stuck to the main events: BTCC, British Superbikes, and international championships.

There’s a surprising conclusion, that I really wasn’t expecting: Silverstone is the UK’s bargain motorsport venue.

BTCC & BSB

There’s not a lot of variation in the big two domestic championships. All the MotorSport Vision venues – Brands Hatch, Cadwell Park, Oulton Park, Snetterton – are £25 a pop for race day general admission, as are Donington Park, Knockhill and Thruxton.

The only ones below that are Croft at £24, and Silverstone with an early bird price of £23.20. Do Silverstone’s haul of big international events create economies of scale that enable them to undercut the competition?

Rockingham is the only venue at over £25, though in fairness their £26 includes a grandstand seat as standard. Mainly because there’s virtually nowhere else to watch from.

International

Inevitably Formula Two is the cheapest international event, and again Silverstone comes out on top at £9 compared to £17 at Brands Hatch. You could argue that the Brands Hatch event is co-headlined by the International GT Open, and that Silverstone’s support line-up of Radicals and Minis is not comparable. But having been to F2 at Brands Hatch last year, I can assure you that it’s not worth the asking price, relative to other events.

Next up at £29 is DTM, which doesn’t really work on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit. Moving on, then.

The Superbike World Championship is another where Silverstone wins: £32 compared to £40 at Donington Park.

Silverstone is also the most expensive venue though – but then, hosting the two premier class championships, that’s not much of a surprise. There are still early bird discounts to be had on MotoGP, starting at £52, but no such luck with Formula 1, which is quite the leap up at £135 or more. Perhaps there’s something to the argument that F1 is subsidising everything else at Silverstone.

The festivities are over for another year, everyone’s back at work, it’s wet and windy, the news is unremittingly bleak – it’s easy to get down. So, in an effort to keep SAD at bay, here are some reasons to be blindly optimistic.

• It may be months until the new motorsport year gets into full flow, but until then there’s testing and, more importantly and immediately, the Dakar to keep us occupied. Unfortunately Australian broadcaster SBS seems to be finally using geolocation on its website, but with the likes of JMLatvalaFan around on YouTube, even that’s no reason to be down if you’ve not got Eurosport.
• It’s true that the first couple of Formula 1 races won’t be live on the BBC – but don’t dispair, non-Sky types! I for one look forward to having no temptation to get up ludicrously early. I like F1, but I also like a lie-in.
• I also like Ben Edwards, the BBC’s new F1 commentator. His excitable enthusiasm made ITV’s BTCC coverage what it is, and he’ll be a tough act to follow there. But I can’t wait to hear him getting excited about F1 on a regular basis.
• The new CRT entries in MotoGP may not bother the aliens for podium places, but they’ll add much needed bikes to the grid. And in the same way as the new F1 teams a couple of years ago, the battle to be the least bad of them will be something else to keep an eye on. They have to be welcomed.
• It’s not great in the WRC at the moment – just ask North One Sport or Kris Meeke. But it’s not all bad: we can look forward to Loeb versus Hirvonen at Citroen, Petter Solberg in a factory Ford, and Citroens for new faces Nasser Al-Attiyah and Thierry Neuville. We just need the commercial side sorting in the next fortnight, to avoid the Monte’s return to the WRC being less than the triumph it ought to be.
• With Evo regulations as standard this year, there’s every reason to hope that British Superbikes will be even more competitive than 2011. The entry list is filling up nicely, too.
• There’s never much known about the BTCC at this time of year, and 2012 is no different. But with most other grids broadly known quantities already, it’s nice to have a big reveal to look forward to – and that’s what the BTCC Media Day, a couple of weeks before the season starts, usually is.

Photo Credit
Houston Marsh – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Which nation is best at motorsport? Well, I thought I’d try to find out. To do so, I threw the final standings of an entirely arbitrary selection of world championships – Formula 1, WRC, WTCC, MotoGP and Superbike World Championship – at a spreadsheet, normalised the points to a total of 100 per championship, and totalled them up by nation. Then I made a pretty pie chart.

It’s impossible to make this fair, the most obvious issue being three car championships and only two bike. But given the extent to which Spain and Italy dominate on two-wheels, it doesn’t seem too unreasonable. Plus, this way, the UK comes out on top. Which is the most important thing.

The UK and Spain – second overall – are the only nations to score in every one of the five championships – albeit the UK not very well in WRC and MotoGP, and Spain in WRC and WTCC. They’re followed by Italy, overwhelmingly thanks to lots of riders doing quite well – without winning championships – in MotoGP and SBK. Though to be fair, no championships were brought back to the UK either.

France is fourth, thanks to a couple of championships – Yvan Muller in WTCC, Sebastien Loeb in WRC – and Loeb’s new favourite rival Sebastien Ogier. Almost all of fifth place Germany’s points came from F1, and two-thirds of those from Sebastian Vettel.

Outside the top five, we finally leave Europe, and find Australia, represented almost exclusively by Casey Stoner and Mark Webber. Finland, in seventh, inevitably gets all its points from the WRC, chiefly Mikko Hirvonen and Jari Matti-Latvala.

The USA in eighth is pretty much the MotoGP lads, since most American drivers tend to stay in America. Ninth is Norway, courtesy of Mads Ostberg and the Solbergs in WRC. Alain Menu’s WTCC third place near single-handedly takes tenth for Switzerland.

The whole table follows for your delectation:

(more…)

The FIA has issued a new Driver’s Guide to Safe Motor Sport. It’s a very serious document, of course, but it’s also got a bit of personality.

Cover star

I’m not sure that it’s a compliment to be chosen to adorn the cover of such a document. That dubious honour goes to Sergio Perez, whose qualifying crash in Monaco this year is presumably intended to illustrate the safety of the sport, rather than serve as a judgement on his driving.

Excerpts

On pre-event precautions: “It makes sense to remove false teeth.” Well, motorsport is not exclusively a young person’s game. Michael Schumacher, Pedro de la Rosa, almost all of the WTCC – I’m looking at you.

On helmets: “Don’t forget to peel the protective plastic wrap off a new visor (it happens, even in Formula 1!).” Oh, come on! You can’t tease like that and not deliver the goods! Go on, tell us. It was Mark Blundell, wasn’t it?

On safety harness belts: “Wear them as tight as possible (whilst still breathing).” No comment, it’s just a good line.

An appendix gives advice on what to eat and drink, including the suggestion to “include a few biscuits” in any pre-race meal. Maybe I was destined to be a racing driver after all.

The guide also also features quips on co-drivers, bowels and more. In addition to some actual safety advice. Good job, FIA!