Why 90's BTCC was the best era #blogpost

Ok so lets get one thing straight i was a very late 90’s kid but when i was old enough to figure out how a TV worked i found these channels called ITV and Motors TV and on there you could find such things as F1, motoGP, rally cross and even rallying but above all else there was the BTCC by far the best racing series to ever exist and probably one of that last good racing series to exist. I used to sit there for hours upon end watching these ridiculous race cars go round and round tracks crashing,loosing control, spinning and some really close and hectic racing, in this blog post today i will go through all of the things that made this era especially of the BTCC the best

The History

In 1990 the FIA opened up a new Motorsport class known as the super touring cars, it was a modified 2.0L class and near enough every manufacturer was invited to take part from Nissan to Ford to Renault even Volvo gave it a go with the huge 5 pot tank. The BTCC’s Super Touring era, which ran from 1990-2000, saw strong grids of nearly 30 cars packed in with big-budget manufacturer teams competing with proper ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ cars being driven by well-paid star international drivers, and all cheered on by huge crowds watching close, exciting racing i mean what more could you want.

Super Touring replaced Group A as the norm in nearly every touring car championship across the world, but escalating costs, and the withdrawal of works teams caused the category to collapse in the late 1990s. The cars looked like regular production road cars, while expensive changes had to be made to provide space for racing tyres inside the standard wheel arches, but for those nearly 10 years it was the best and nothing today has even come close to the excitement and drama of this racing series.

The cars

If you say to near enough anyone the letters BTCC there is one car that stands out from the rest, the one and only Volvo 850R and S40 the big 5 pot tank that know one expected to even get close to the big boys of Motorsport but everyone was proven wrong when that Volvo turned out to be one hell of a fast car, this opened the floodgates for other manufacturers to say, you know what id like to ave a go at that if that car can win our Toyota corollas and Honda accords can as well, and that is what made this motorsport great really really really close racing from cars that just shouldn’t be getting close at all.

The rules were simple enough The Super Touring cars were required to be a minimum of 4.20 metres (13.8 ft) in length, with four doors, effectively requiring a small family saloon car as a minimum. No more than 2 litres engine capacity, or six cylinders were permitted, and the engine was required to be normally aspirated. Only two wheels could be driven and steered. For homologation, initially at least 2500 units of the model used must have been produced. In 1995, in a bid to counter the increasing numbers of homologation specials this was increased to at least 25,000 units.

The racing, what made it so great

first of all yes this is two of the same team and yes he just took his team mate out and rolled him over, but anyway what made it so great, lets look at today’s Motorsport full of rules ad regulations and a billion safety requirements and i totally get that well because you don’t want people dying of course but equally you don’t want boring racing, know one wants that well the BTCC had a little or quite a large thing in some cases called body contact, that is why it was such a special to watch i mean that is what racing should be i think just the car the driver no stupid electronic nanny’s helping just your skill and determination to win.

in today’s world its just a bunch of sure very fast cars, a lot faster than back then but there is that many driver aids and other interference’s that soon racing and Motorsport in general wont even require a driver and I’m sorry but that is complete utter rubbish and should never be a thing in the same way driver-less road cars are going to be thing.

to sum up basically what I’m saying is what made the BTCC super touring cars great was the drivers and the amazing tough cars they were driving also let me add one more thing the commentators were 10 times better than today’s.

to sum up then the 90’s BTCC era the Super Touring Cars were just in a totally different league to any other Motorsport of the time and in my opinion there will never be anything like it again, and as well as being fantastic racing to watch you could also play one of the best ever OG racing games based of of it.

the legendary Toca Touring Car Championship for the PS1

this game was literally my childhood and honestly one of the many things that got me into cars in the first place.
thank you for reading this blogpost guys hope you enjoyed it and let me know what you think of it down in the comments