[BTCC] New Regulations From 2011

[gregc]

I've already posted this in the regs thread, but thinking about it it deserves it's own thread really - mods, please delete if you disagree

http://btcc.net/html/generalnews_detail.php?id=1490

New BTCC regs from 2011 - 2L turbo engines, many standardised parts. They will run alongside the S2000 cars with equalisation until 2013. They reckon that costs will be cut by 50%, and engines should last a full season without a rebuild. All the teams have agreed the change. I've never been one of those shouting for a rule change, but if it really does cut costs by that amount it can only be a good thing.

According to Alan Gow, "The broad concept for our 'Next-Gen' cars was that they should be larger than some current ones, be more exciting, faster, safer and also much cheaper to build, buy and maintain as well as provide a more 'level playing field" - sounds good to me!

[kristof14]

Interesting to see that they've decided on FWD only, thus excluding BMW completely!

[duke_toaster]

2 litre turbos would encourage Subaru and Mitsubishi, 4WD would be a good option for them. The issue is keeping 4WD in check, though.

[touring fan01]

Originally Posted by kristof14

Interesting to see that they've decided on FWD only, thus excluding BMW completely!

Remember the great days of super touring in the BTCC (95-2000) that we all talk about? There were no BMW's then either. So obviously they don't need them for the series to be successful or popular.

[safc_fan89]

The 4 years or so before that, with BMWs at the front and winning championships, were arguably greater...

Anyway, if any regs increase the likelihood that we will have a full grid, then it can only be a good thing.

[andy97]

Originally Posted by touring fan01

Remember the great days of super touring in the BTCC (95-2000) that we all talk about? There were no BMW's then either. So obviously they don't need them for the series to be successful or popular.

RWD wasn't banned, though was it? And didn't BMW race STs in Britain with the Schnitzer squad for a while (up to 1996), as well as in other championships. I'm even fairly sure that Ford, Nissan and Peugeot even tried to develop RWD versions of their cars out of the transverse engined 4WD cars in their then range.

[Speed-King]

The ‘Next Generation Touring Car’ (NGTC) regulations will come into force in 2011 and will slash car and engine budgets for teams by some 50 per cent. This will largely be achieved by switching to more durable two-litre turbo engines and the standardising of major components such as sub-frames, gearboxes, suspension and brakes. Furthermore, the NGTC regulations will be based around larger ‘family-sized’ front-wheel-drive cars.

What does "subframe" in this context mean? Will this be tubeframed cars like in DTM or America come 2011??

Edit: Nevermind, found it in the more specific article:

Production bodyshell with a standardised roll cage design/specification. Front & rear subframes to incorporate specified suspension/brake components and engine location.

[helterskelter]

I hope Wtcc follows the same route, except that, if they want to keep BMW in, they need to allow RWD cars. I don't think it's a big deal, though, you give them more weight and, like last year and this year, one of the races has a rolling start.

[Scotracer]

A return to Super Tourer performance, it seems. Let's hope they are as impressive to watch. I've never been a fan of Turbo charged engines but as long as the racing is real racing, I'm game.

300BHP isn't all that much, though. They could quite easily get more out of a 2 litre Turbo

In fact, these regulations are some-what reminiscent of the SEAT Leon Cup cars:



Which are 300BHP 2.0 Turbo cars. Hopefully the Tourers will be lighter as the SEAT Cupras are 1250kg (under a tonne would be ideal for a Touring car).

http://www.seatsportuk.co.uk/sccNet/pdf/08Leon.pdf

[touringlegend]

Sounds even more of a 'spec' set of regulations than what the BTC Touring rules were.

Good on the BTCC for being brave to go out on it's own with these. Perhaps they don't have any choice whilst it looks like the WTCC could implode any time soon. The regulations do suggest they have finally accepted the idea we won't be seeing works teams again in the near future.

[Speed-King]

Ha, I recently wanted to ask Alan Gow on his forum if BTCC made any preparations for a possible implosion of WTCC... Seems like he was a few steps ahead!!

Now can someone hammer some sense into Aufrecht, Haug and Ulrich to make DTM accept these rules??

[Speed-King]

Nevermind, either wrong thread or a poster removed the post I referred to.

[touring fan01]

Originally Posted by andy97

RWD wasn't banned, though was it? And didn't BMW race STs in Britain with the Schnitzer squad for a while (up to 1996), as well as in other championships. I'm even fairly sure that Ford, Nissan and Peugeot even tried to develop RWD versions of their cars out of the transverse engined 4WD cars in their then range.

No RWD wasn't banned, but nobody raced them. The last year that BMW had a factory team in the series was '95, so I don't see why anyone should be concerned about BMW as a manufacturer not being part of the series because they haven't put anything into the BTCC for 14 years. They had their chances to get involved and haven't bothered, so why should we be bothered about them?

[Scotracer]

Does anyone know the maximum width allowed for Super 2000 cars? The new regulations stipulate 1875mm maximum but that seems pretty narrow...

[kristof14]

Originally Posted by touring fan01

No RWD wasn't banned, but nobody raced them. The last year that BMW had a factory team in the series was '95, so I don't see why anyone should be concerned about BMW as a manufacturer not being part of the series because they haven't put anything into the BTCC for 14 years. They had their chances to get involved and haven't bothered, so why should we be bothered about them?

I apologise for pointing out that the new rules would exclude BMW! I had no idea it would cause you such offence. (by the way, BMW competed in 1996 as a factory team with Schnitzer)

I merely pointed it out as the BMW is the best customer car available at the moment with there being 4 of them running at the front as privateers. I never mentioned factory support

The new regs look good, we could see a lot of different new makes and models, just hope the aero doesn't look like the old BTC regs!

[touring fan01]

Originally Posted by Scotracer

Does anyone know the maximum width allowed for Super 2000 cars? The new regulations stipulate 1875mm maximum but that seems pretty narrow...

Actually its the opposite; 1875mm is wider than the current Super 2000 cars. (The BMW's are 1858mm)

[redshoes]

I'm not a fan of the turbo element but this makes more sense that the 1.6 turbo proposed by the FIA. At least it's a relatively low boost limit.

Standard suspension/gearbox/etc - very similar to BTCT which is not necessarily a bad thing. There's enough lead time so hopefully we won't see a repeat of the supply issues that effected BTCT early on.

Restricted/equalised rear aero package - BTCT again

Increase min length - will please those who want to see a return to saloon cars and away from small hatchbacks.

FWD only - yes it excludes BMW but surely better to exclude one make and remove the arguments over equalisation.

'TOCA' unbranded engine - not sure on that bit. Interesting idea though.

[MarkkuAlen86]

I'm impressed.

They sound like a big improvement on S2000 regs anyway.

[Winchester]

Once again the BTCC shows it is one or more steps ahead of the rest when it comes to new innovations!
And BMW aren't excluded - see BTCC.net. S2000 will be allowed to run alongside the new regs under equal conditions until 2013, when the new regs will be given a performance advantage.

[davyboy]

For the most part I think the new rules are excellent... by pseudo-spec.ing most of the major components, it will make the championship more accessible to privateers which is a very good thing.

However, ruling out RWD is a kick in the teeth for BMW and anyone considering running a BMW and that's very sad in my opinion. As a marque [not a manufacturer], it has been involved in the BTCC for decades and its a great pity that it will be no more... particularly for BMW fans like myself.

Anothering thing, spec.ing out the internals of a car means that the only variable will be the bodyshape. This narrows the envelope for development as we all know, the narrower that becomes, the more expensive it becomes. One or two will become optimal and as it won't be possible for a non-optimal shape to compensate through power, weight distribution etc, it may actually have the reverse effect in terms of broadening the marques and reducing the cost. We'll have to see.

Those two issues aside, I think its a very positive development. Given that the WTCC will likely follow a similar formula, SEAT and BMW will probably announce their withdrawal from touring car racing in the not too distant future.

[Sodemo]

From memory, after the 1996 and 1997 BTCC seasons and Audi being quite dominant (in 1996 at least) the regs were ammended to admit front wheel drive Supertourers only. Audi continued for one year with their front wheel drive A4, but after a season of uncompetitiveness decided to pull out, after being quite annoyed that their Quattro system was banned.

I really do not see why they are excluding rear wheel drive, I mean if its a matter of performance balance, then just slap 20-30kg of weight on the rear drive cars and have done with it. It worked great for the BTCC through the 90's with BMW coming in and out of competitiveness, peaking really in 1996 with many race wins before Schnizer/BMW pulled out.

[Valenok]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

Now can someone hammer some sense into Aufrecht, Haug and Ulrich to make DTM accept these rules??

I'd like to see DTM rules similar, but more powerful - 3l turbo and RWD

[duke_toaster]

Originally Posted by redshoes

'TOCA' unbranded engine - not sure on that bit. Interesting idea though.

It should be cheap - the idea is pretty much the same as Max Mosley's proposed Cosworth unit.

Originally Posted by davyboy

Anothering thing, spec.ing out the internals of a car means that the only variable will be the bodyshape. This narrows the envelope for development as we all know, the narrower that becomes, the more expensive it becomes. One or two will become optimal and as it won't be possible for a non-optimal shape to compensate through power, weight distribution etc, it may actually have the reverse effect in terms of broadening the marques and reducing the cost. We'll have to see.

The cars will be wind tunnel equalized so there should not be so much of a problem.

[andy97]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

From memory, after the 1996 and 1997 BTCC seasons and Audi being quite dominant (in 1996 at least) the regs were ammended to admit front wheel drive Supertourers only. Audi continued for one year with their front wheel drive A4, but after a season of uncompetitiveness decided to pull out, after being quite annoyed that their Quattro system was banned.

I really do not see why they are excluding rear wheel drive, I mean if its a matter of performance balance, then just slap 20-30kg of weight on the rear drive cars and have done with it. It worked great for the BTCC through the 90's with BMW coming in and out of competitiveness, peaking really in 1996 with many race wins before Schnizer/BMW pulled out.

As discussed on the "Universal Touring Car regs" thread, FWD & RWD were still allowed in Super Tourers in 2001. there's an extract of the Appx J regs on the Super Touring Register web site, I just can't be bothered to post the link again.

[werner]

This is all very interesting. I'm a little bit worried that due to the fact that so many parts of the car are spec, cars that are performing poor on the few things that are productionbased can not be developed into a succesfull racecar. In the current situation it might have other strong points to compensate, and if not, it is not an interesting car anyway.
I'm also interested in how they are going to get the cars equal aerodynamically. It does seem to be a bit hard to do that in combination with production bodyshells.
The last question I have is how TOCA is going to secure that the engines will last a whole season. The engines will still be productionbased engines who deliver 150-200hp in the roadversions of the car that will have to cope with 300 horses. I think the trick is that enginebuilders can make the parts that are most prone to damage themselves, and offcourse the 7000rpm revlimit makes it easier compared to the 8500 we have now.
I'm not fond of the non-branded TOCA-engine. In a touringcar the engine should at least be based on an engine from the brand of the car.

I think wat Alan Gow now should do is try to sell this ruleset to other championships who might be interested in it. I know he has a quite good relationship with the organisers of the STCC. The Danes where thinking of changing the DTC in a more spec-based series recently, so they might be interested as well. In Germany, the Pro-car serie is a bit struggling to get a nice grid with S2000-cars, so for them a change might be interesting. And in Belgium, the BTCS is a bit of a mess in terms of cars eligible, so the BTCC-rules might give them some focus.

If he can make sure a few important championships join the BTCC, that will help the development of more cars, even better supply of parts etc.