After the conclusion of the 2019 British Touring Car Championship season, new rule tweaks have been announced with some exciting changes set to take place next season to tyres, success ballast and Qualifying in particular.
Goodyear take over as the official supplier and will have three tyre compounds – in the form of hard, medium and soft used on race day at Snetterton. The same will be done at Croft after the circuit’s resurfacing earlier this year.
There will also be more freedom for teams to make strategic changes with teams not required to pick tyres that they will use for the race day during qualifying – this means they can now keep their strategy to themselves and not share them with other teams.
Success ballast wise, the maximum will be increased to 60kg for first place, as a result the ballast will go down to tenth place in six kilogram increments making it even more difficult than before for those on the front row to continue to win with the maximum in their car.
A new Qualifying format will also be trailed at Snetterton, drivers will now have 25 minutes to set a time and the fastest ten will then move through to a final Qualifying session with a ten-minute session used to determine the front end of the grid.
Alan Gow, Chief Executive of TOCA, commented: “Clearly, the regulations for the BTCC work tremendously well. That’s self-evident from the fantastically close racing and championship battles, but we’re always looking at ways in which they can be improved, so whilst these are fairly minor tweaks, they will certainly add some interesting new elements to next season’s championship.”
These changes will come into effect when the British Touring Car Championship begins again on 28/29 March at Donington Park.
