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JHS18

Btcc Brands Hatch - Rounds 1, 2 And 3.

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Thanks for clearing some stuff up.

The only reason I walked out was that I had set aside 20 minutes to watch the race before I had planned to do something else...seeing that the race was going to run over, I had to get back to that. Would have liked to have seen it...

...but then I saw Plato won so I guess I'm glad I didn't. :P

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Thanks for clearing some stuff up.

The only reason I walked out was that I had set aside 20 minutes to watch the race before I had planned to do something else...seeing that the race was going to run over, I had to get back to that. Would have liked to have seen it...

...but then I saw Plato won so I guess I'm glad I didn't. :P

Haha. Hopefully the same guy puts in on YouTube, because it was really entertaining between Collard-Jordan-Plato before Jordan and Plato got by.

Think oddly, after the restart, race three seemed to be the cleanest race of the day. Race one was definitely a mess, race two was better, race three post restart was fine.

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All races today seemed a bit of a mess actually. I recall only one race that didn't feature a safety car. The award for the messiest start goes to the Clio Cup however. Thankfully everyone was okay in this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmgSEI5Tp30&feature=g-all-u&context=G2895ee4FAAAAAAAADAA

I'll get onto Moody's commentary later. I need to look at the dictionary to find enough suitable words to describe how bad it was.

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I'm not surprised there was carnage in that Clio Cup race, the cars could barely fit on the grid, which is never a good sign. As for the BTCC, are they just rusty or always so inclined to drive into each other? Messy stuff but entertaining nevertheless.

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I'm not surprised there was carnage in that Clio Cup race, the cars could barely fit on the grid, which is never a good sign. As for the BTCC, are they just rusty or always so inclined to drive into each other? Messy stuff but entertaining nevertheless.

You raise an interesting point which I've thought about quite a bit.

Basically, a lot of teams/drivers on the grid run on really small budgets. It rubbishes the popular misconception that everyone in motorsport has bags of cash - a lot of deals came together very late. Even though the BTCC winter is much longer than say, F1's winter, not many teams do pre season testing because they can't afford it. BTCC, other than Media Day, doesn't have any group tests - and as such, the last time a lot of guys were racing was the last race of last season, way back in October. So yeah, I think it is fair to say that they do get rusty. However using the bumpers (or fenders if you're American :P) has always been part and parcel of the BTCC.

It's funny in a way to look at fans' different opinions. One the one hand, okay, I'll admit, things can get a little too crazy like we saw at the start of race one. It is never nice to see expensive cars getting smashed up, especially when deals came together so late, or work was only finished on the cars this weekend. It is never nice to see drivers/marshals potentially getting hurt - there were a few close calls today that I was worried about, and could on another day, have had very different outcomes.

But then people complain about something like WTCC/DTM , championships which probably have - dare I say it - better driving standards than the BTCC, but people complain there's not enough action in them as BTCC and that they are boring.

BTCC's perhaps not the most clean form of racing, nor the purest, but this weekend, MSV reported record ticket sales. There were more than 30,000 fans trackside today, and viewing figures on TV are now regularly reaching the two million mark. It has 6-7 hours of live coverage on TV. None of Britain's other top championships, British GT, Formula 3, whatever, can claim to enjoy the same sort of success. Neither can WTCC or DTM, in this country at least.

The recipe works. BTCC offers exciting, affordable and fan friendly racing. Comapre that to F1 (which only does exciting, and sometimes not very well) and it strikes me as no surprise why the BTCC is in such rich health at the moment.

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On a support race related note, big congrats to Richard Plant for his maiden victory in the Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain on Saturday.

Had a tougher time of it today, but he's a top class guy. He's helped me out with some university work in the past, and it'll be great to see him in the title hunt this year.

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