By Mick Palmer

Autosport at the NEC. Even in the interconnected world of the 2020s where the international racing season launches in January and ends in December, the event is still considered to be what kicks off the racing year. In the UK it’s in the middle of the ‘off-season’ which is a misnomer in the sense that work does not stop at the final chequered flag of a season, only to be resumed on the first pitlane green light of the following spring. In the world of Touring Cars the show still a crucial hub for networking as far as drivers and would-be-drivers is concerned, and there were more than a few doing the rounds at the event in preparation for 2024, with Touring Car Magazine chatting to many of them (with the interviews in full appearing in the next issue of the magazine.)

2022 BTCC Champion Tom Ingram had his own stand on site with his trusty i30 steed lined up beside the ‘Tingram’ tent, and the 27 time BTCC race winner was on top form as usual. After challenging him to a competitive ‘eat off’ the Excelr8 driver brazenly stated: “ I could set a Guinness World Record for the amount of crisps consumed in one sitting. A Walkers 48 box? I could smash through them in an hour.” Apart from being hungry to jump into the very American world of competitive eating the 2023 runner up is very hungry to retake the top spot in the table this year, “I’m a better driver now than I ever have been,” he said confidently about how his mindset and skillset developed through last term. “I have everything right in all parts of my life with where I am personally, and also with the people I have around me at the team. I’ve got my engineers, my mechanics, my support network. I feel better and stronger than I can ever have done. I’m more confident and I feel like 2024 will be a year for us to come back and take it back.”

While there has been no official announcement about Ingram remaining at Excelr8, the tone and wording of that solidity more than infers that he’ll remain with the team that he took the title with in 2022, and that he views Ash Sutton as his main rival, which is something that Dan Rowbottom – 2023 teammate of the current champ will have to do from within the NAPA squad. On Friday he confirmed to Touring Car Mag/Motor Racing UK that he will remain with the team for 2024 (a position he reconfirmed when we asked for a second time on Saturday) by stating: “We effectively did a rolling deal anyway so we’re staying with NAPA, which I’m very pleased to say.”

Rowbottom was naturally positioned as a rear gunner at times for the squad last year, and gave up places to Sutton to help in the title tilt for his teammate – which isn’t exactly what a driver aims for – but being astute means that he didn’t huff and puff over it. “You know, that’s a pretty hard thing to do, but we did that and did it with pride,” he shared about giving away points for the greater good.”Hopefully we won’t be in a position to have to do that again, but we did it. So, you know, we were a part of that really amazing record-breaking year. There’s no denying it wasn’t very successful for me. I’ve studied it, I’ve assessed it. I know what I’m missing. I know what I do have and it allowed me to look at myself a lot. There was a lot of things that I didn’t do well. I probably wasn’t committed enough because I spent far too much time really on commercial aspects. Obviously it’s massively important for me. It’s what keeps me on the grid, but probably I let it come too close the race weekends, so that’s something where I’ve learned as a lesson.”

Educating and improving yourself is an important part of what it takes to become a successful racing driver. Resting on your laurels or accepting the status quo is not an effective tactic, and it’s one area where Jake Hill has found himself to be adept at using to improve, and after halting the traditional Touring Car habit of changing teams and starting from scratch year-on-year a third consecutive WSR season has allowed him to concentrate on the details. “We didn’t make a big enough step forward in the car last year,” he said of the past season. “I think I improved a lot as a driver. I won six races and beating Colin again for my second year of being teammates with him for me is quite a big thing to to do. I think we got too happy with where the car was, but we start again for 2024 and it’s never your turn, but you know, let’s face it, we’re in really good car again. I’m in a really good place and happy. All the guys in the team are happy. I’ve got exactly the same team around me again, it’s up to us to go and win.”

There was a lot of crossover talk between the BTCC and TCR UK with drivers confirming moves one way or another. Rumours were flying (some wild and unsubstantiated) and flat out denials that any kind of change was on the books were also bandied about. Josh Cook, Scott Sumpton, Will Powell and Carl Boardley all had things to say about that part of the silly season. Reigning TCR UK champion Boardley confirmed his plan to run in the TCR World Finals at Portimao in March and confirmed that the BTCC is firmly off the radar. Despite owning a car and a TBL he said that it was all in the past now as a driver, and that he hasn’t ruled out another TCR UK campaign, but that he’s also quite a way from giving it a second season.

The long term plan for Scott Sumpton is to eventually develop into a driver to match the likes of Hill, Ingram and Sutton, but he does not play down the task ahead as a rookie in a new team entering the BTCC, and is satisfied that the TCR experience will position him to grow into the upcoming challenge. “I’ve earned my place. I have the right to be on the track and I have to own my piece of track,” he said of the forthcoming challenge. “At the moment I’m in the gym every single day in the morning. I need to be dedicated to do it. I want to do it. I’ve got the opportunity to do it so I’ve got to put everything into it. When I’m on the treadmill, I put on the British Touring Cars to see what was going on in the 2023 season, just to see how how they race, to see how some drivers are, how they’re overtake. I’m just trying to find out as much as I can before I go into that first round, and even it’s like the on boards from the pole positions. Just watching them and others because it’s going to be different to TCR with the hybrid as well.”

The stability will help as he moves the the series with Restart Racing from TCR and Sumpton admits that he does not have his head in the clouds with a belief that he’ll be anywhere near winning this year, but he has a winning familiar teammate in Chris Smiley who he will continue to look towards. “Chris is amazing. He’s helped me out through the whole of 2023 season and helped me become a better driver. But it’s going to be completely different stepping into a British Touring Car. He’s been there and done it so he can give me some good tips. I think Chris is a really good mentor and I can’t wait to work with him again throughout the whole of the season, and the team too. It’s become like a family.”

Heading in the other direction is Will Powell. After two half seasons in the BTCC with HARD and One Motorsport Powell returns to the TCR world in the car that Sumpton raced in 2023.  “I’m very excited to come and go and compete” Powell said. “The opportunity with the car with JAS Motorsport has come up late, but that has fitted with me rebuilding. We had a a lot of problems last year with the business deal with ONE Motorsport, which was well documented but I don’t want to go into it. We’re building the Sport 77 brand and of course with the Restart Racing boys moving that’s then left the Honda free and we’ve been able to do an arrangement to pick that up and carry on where they left off and that’s that’s what we intend to do.”

Powell’s outfit has also teamed up with disabled former Supersport racer Cedric Bloch, and all the stars align because he views TCR UK as a proposition that works. “In the BTCC for me it seemed that something would happen at every round. Something would always go wrong and we were on the back foot business wise behind the scenes from from the start. I think the (BTCC) business model is broken, and that’s why I’m here. You know, I’m a businessman first and foremost I’ve been in Sports Marketing all my life  you could argue I’m better at getting sponsorship than I am at driving a racing car!! On a serious note however I love that championship. I love what it represents. I’ve got a huge amount of respect for Alan Gow and TOCA. But for me? You know, we’ve come do something and we feel welcomed.”

The media circus has placed his former One Motorsport teammate Josh Cook and his replacement Jade Edwards in the series for next year, after a number of journalists shared a rumour that he was on his way to the championship he answered Touring Car mag with: “I have no idea. I have no idea if I’ll be doing anything at all this year.”

After a first winless campaign since 2017 Cook was philosophical in his appraisal of the year that has just passed. “It was a tough season. It’s not what we wanted,” he said. “We did the best job with the equipment that we had and the team did  a really good job. I was pleased with the mechanics and the engineers. They did give it their absolute all. But we were going into a gun fight with a knife it (the Team Dynamics Car/Engine package) was a huge difference. Completely different to what we were expecting. It was a surprise to us all. We had strict homologations that we couldn’t change so we were stuck with what we had and sadly we just had to make the best of it.” Edwards concurred. “There was quite a big difference actually. A lot of people just see that I raced a Honda and went back to the same team in a Honda, but it was a completely different car. The engine is set differently in the car so it fundamentally changes the characteristics compared to the previous Honda chassis and engine I raced. There was some tricky areas (on the car.) All three of us struggled, you know, Josh and Aiden (Moffat) struggled with the car and and for me, jumping in halfway through the year. Obviously, I was on the back foot.” While there were sightings of Edwards close to the TCR stand, and when asked about having a drive sorted for 2024 she simply stated: “I don’t.”

Having started the season in a Team HARD Cupra last year Edwards was also the only driver with the backbone to truly share an opinion on how the demise of the squad has had an effect on the chase for a seat in the series – not just at the rear of the field. “We’ve not lost a team from the back. I want to make that clear. The team we’ve lost do give an an entry into the championship, but they were also on their day very competitive. We’ve not only lost cars from mid to to back of the field. We’ve also lost cars that with Bobby (Thompson) and Dan (Lloyd) that were  running near the front. So we’ve we’ve lost a team that were chipping away and making progress.It’s six cars that are now not there. It’s going be tough. There’s less seats available, and there’s the same amount of drivers, if not more, that want them. So this winter has become harder than any other, purely because there’s just less less seats available.”

There were a lot of rumours milling around the event at the weekend from camps within the world of Touring Cars that claimed to know that ‘X’ driver had went to ‘X’ team. Some of it is true and will be revealed soon, and some of it appears to have been calculated with the help of Jazzy Cigarettes and bags of sniff.