Quote:
Originally posted by Carrie
Well, isn't this just a topic to raise people's opinions. It amazes me when people comment about the BTCC being too full of new drivers and say that it would be better with a return of the old names. Just remember that at one time, the old faces were the new drivers. We need new talent coming into any series and surely it's best to have a mix of talented newcomers and established drivers.
I think most people will be most attracted to the time period when they got interested in the BTCC and undoubtedly we saw some fantastic racing in the early nineties which makes people hark back to that as a glory era. As has been said it was certainly on the decline by 1999 and 2000 was just dire, the ST era had to come to an end and the BTCC needed to evolve into what it is today.
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Carrie- your comment about people being 'attracted to the time period when they got interested in the BTCC' sums it up for me.
I've followed the BTCC for nearly 20 years, back to the Group A years in the 80's, so have seen the 'glory era' of the early-mid 90's with loads of manufacturer-backed cars and big-name drivers come and go, and in many ways what we have now feels a little like what I used to watch back in the 80's- a small number of factory-backed cars and a lot of independents. The big difference to me is probably that back then the independents often tended to be older drivers who stuck around for years (thinking back to guys like Dennis Leech who had been around the BTCC since the 60's), rather than the young drivers we have now who have graduated from the one-make series or whatever and are aspiring to that elusive factory drive.
As you said, the old faces at one point WERE the new drivers- (I must have seen some of Tim Harvey's earliest BTCC appearances....) and somewhere amongst those young hopefuls we're seeing now might just be the guys who in 10 years time we could be talking about as some of the BTCC greats....