There’s something going very wrong in British motorsport. The trigger to writing this column is the fallout from Ricky Collard being denied his maiden victory in the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch last Sunday following a thrilling race against three-time champion Ash Sutton. But Collard, whose crime was multiple breaches of track limits, is only part of a worrying bigger picture.
There were six race meetings in the UK last weekend, including three that were headlined by some of our most prestigious series: BTCC at Brands, the British GT Championship at Silverstone, and TCR UK at Croft. Across those three events, there were no fewer than 10 races where the on-the-road winner was given a penalty, and in one case was excluded. In nine of the 10, that resulted in a driver who hadn’t crossed the line first being awarded victory, the exception being Ginetta Juniors at Silverstone, where Freddie Slater was given track-limits penalties in two races, but in one of them had pulled out sufficient gap to still be the winner.
