The 2020 Kwik Fit[1]British Touring Car Championship (commonly abbreviated as BTCC) was a motor racing championship for production-based touring cars held across England and Scotland. The championship featured a mix of professional motor racing teams and privately funded amateur drivers competing in highly modified versions of family cars which are sold to the general public and conform to the technical regulations for the championship. The 2020 season was the 63rd British Touring Car Championship season and the tenth season for cars conforming to the Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) technical specification. The Championship was won by Ashley Sutton.
Teams and drivers
All drivers competed under British racing licences.[2]
Subaru will not enter a manufacturer team in the series after their four-year agreement with Team BMR ended at the end of the 2019 season. Team BMR would rebrand as BMR Engineering to design cars for other teams. BMR Engineering later entered a technical partnership with Laser Tools Racing, which allowed them to expand to a two-car entry for 2020.[45][36]
Power Maxed Racing originally intended to enter the 2020 season as a works team, fielding two Vauxhall Astra cars for Jason Plato and Mat Jackson, but elected to take a sabbatical from the series due to the pandemic with a view to return in 2021. The team would later make a return to the series as an independent team from Oulton Park onwards, fielding a single Astra for drivers on one-off basis.[47][48][22]
Andrew Jordan withdrew from the series following funding issues caused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Team BMW elected to not seek a replacement driver, and effectively slimed down from running three cars to running only two.[2][4]
Howard Fuller, who competed sporadically for Team HARD in the 2012 and 2013 BTCC Seasons, was initially hired to stand in for Bushell but was replaced by Ollie Brown by the time the delayed season started.
Race calendar
The revised championship calendar was announced by the championship organisers on 27 April 2020.[50] All races will be held in the United Kingdom. Original calendar was announced on 16 June 2019,[51] but was revised due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Goodyear is set to become the series' tyre supplier, replacing Dunlop. It will be the first time since the 2002 season that Dunlop does not supply the series with tyres.[52]
Qualifying changes
A new qualifying format of one twenty-five-minute session and a second, ten-minute, qualifying session, in which the top ten in Q1 will set lap times, determining the first ten spaces on the grid. This will be trialled at Snetterton[53]
Support series changes
The Renault UK Clio Cup, which has been part of the TOCA support package since 2000, will leave the BTCC support package and will instead support the British GT Championship. It will be replaced by the Mini Challenge.[54][55]