The Long Wait Is Nearly Over
After what to most British Touring Car fans feels like an age, the long wait is nearly over as teams prepare themselves for round six of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton.
The teams will make the trip to Norfolk where Snetterton will play host for the nations premier tin-top racing series on the new Snetterton 300 layout. This will be the first time that the new layout has been used on the TOCA calendar and for some drivers, the first time that they’ve driven on the new circuit.
Heading into the second half of the season it’s the two Matt’s (technically spelled Matt and Mat) that lead the way in the championship. Already two-time BTCC champion, Matt Neal, tops the pile on 140 points and holds a nine point lead in his turbo-powered Honda Civic ahead of Mat Jackson in his Airwaves Racing turbo Ford Focus.
Gordon Shedden, Andrew Jordan and James Nash complete the top-5 with all three drivers all looking to take their maiden title victory this season. 2010 BTCC Champion, Jason Plato, lies in 6th place after a difficult weekend last time out at Croft. He’ll be looking to get his season back on track at a circuit, although considerably different this year, that he won twice at in 2010 on the way to taking the title.
There will also be two debutants in the series when we hit the Snetterton circuit in little under two weeks time. Martin Byford will step into the vacant seat at AmD Milltek in the turbo powered VW Golf whereas Daniel Welch and his Welch Motorsport team will be both making debuts in the BTCC when their NGTC-spec Proton Gen-3 rolls onto the circuit making a total of four full NGTC-spec machines on the grid.
We can’t wait, and we’re sure that you can’t either.
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James Mappin
