Riches, 70, led the team that devised the current hugely successful NGTC regulations and has overseen the BTCC through four rulesets since his appointment on a full-time basis by series organiser TOCA in 1996.
He will hand over the reins to son Sam Riches, who has been working in the BTCC for two decades since, as a teenager, he became old enough to enter a live pitlane.
Riches Sr joined TOCA from Lotus, where he had worked since the 1970s.
At the Hethel organisation, his responsibilities had spread from manufacturing into engine development, workshops, test facilities, site maintenance and building projects, and he helped veteran Lotus man Tony Rudd re-establish Lotus Engineering.
Riches became a weekend BTCC scrutineer in 1993, but within a couple of years the role was becoming hugely demanding with, among other things, enormous manufacturer support and the move to double-header race weekends.
“I said to Alan [Gow, BTCC boss] I’m packing up, because I can’t go to work at Lotus and do what you want,” Riches told Autosport. “And he said, ‘How much do you want?’ And that’s how we ended up.”
As well as becoming BTCC technical director at that point, Riches, who had joined the FIA Touring Car Technical Working Group in 1993, became the FIA Super Touring technical delegate, travelling to Super Touring races around the world.
With support from Roland Dane, team founder of the Triple Eight squad that ran the Vauxhall works team, Riches then devised the BTC Touring regulations that replaced Super Touring in the BTCC in 2001.
A few years later, he was instrumental in the introduction of the FIA’s latest Super 2000 ruleset, focusing on the national homologation requirements that were necessary for Vauxhall – then the BTCC’s biggest manufacturer supporter – to participate.
Even before his BTCC involvement, Riches had been a scrutineer for over a decade. He was a mechanic for national racing grandee Chris Meek in the 1970s in Special Saloons and Production Sports Cars, and in a poacher-turned-gamekeeper move he took on his first scrutineering role in Prodsports in 1982.
From there, he went on to carry out duties in Ford’s successful Fiesta championship, Formula Ford in 1600, 2000 and Zetec guises, Group N saloons and British Formula 3, and also ‘inherited’ the British Grand Prix job in 1991.
But it is with the BTCC that Riches has become seemingly inextricably associated.
“My original goal was to go at 65,” added Riches, who will retain a consultancy contract for 2023 at least, “and then TOCA set up an option on a five-year extension.
“The world is so different now to where we started. I had a set of scales in the pitlane and that was it basically, and now we’ve got a 40-foot trailer full of kit – the world has moved on!
“[As a consultant] next year, I’ll be in more of a guiding role, maintaining the things we’ve done in the past and ensuring the wheel doesn’t get reinvented and become square in order to have a smooth transition.
“What we don’t want to do is change the direction we’ve been going in, so my knowledge will still be there if required.”
Gow added: “Peter’s retirement will mark a significant change for the championship but I’m confident that it will be a successful transition as Sam takes the reins.
“Having been an integral part of the BTCC since 1993, Peter’s departure will be felt throughout the TOCA paddock, but we’re pleased to be retaining his services as a consultant throughout the 2023 season and wish him all the best in his retirement.”
Autosport says…
To quote a probably overused metaphor, Peter Riches will be leaving a huge pair of shoes to fill. Just as well, then, that his son Sam is a big bloke!
Any keen follower of the BTCC will know that, behind the sheen of big grids providing entertaining racing, there are plenty of shenanigans as teams lobby TOCA on parity, whether that’s more boost for themselves or less for others.
Every now and then one team – or its drivers – will speak out in public and complain that they don’t have enough straightline speed or performance away from the startline.
Riches’s job isn’t an easy one, and his role really is to implement what TOCA wants, which is a fine balancing act to keep everyone happy. Or, perhaps more accurately, to prevent anyone becoming too unhappy.
His latest big task was to lead the implementation of hybrid for 2022, and current championship leader Tom Ingram was absolutely spot-on at the Donington opener in April when, in a post-qualifying paddock chat with this writer, he remarked on what a terrific job TOCA had done.
As Ingram pointed out, three vastly different concepts of car – rear-wheel-drive BMW saloon, front-wheel-drive Ford hatchback, and Ingram’s FWD Hyundai fastback – had qualified at the front of the grid within 0.063 seconds of each other.
While Riches has a more or less constant air of a man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, he has a patience that has benefited teams that may be struggling and also media who need technical principles encapsulating in a relatively easy-to-digest way.
His semi-departure (he is retaining a consultancy role at least for 2023) from the BTCC will be a landmark for the series and many will be sorry to see him go – and wish him well for his COVID-delayed round-the-world trip.
