[BTCC] Round Six, Knockhill 30-31 Jul, Races 16,17&18

[crmalcolm]

Next up on the BTCC calendar for 2022 is the two-day tyre test at Snetterton on 12th and 13th July.
After that, the paddock heads north of the border to Knockhill for the only (current) meeting outside of England. This is another circuit that is traditionally seen as a RWD-favouring track, so the FWD runners will again be hoping to disprove this theory as they did last time out at Croft. Ingram will go into the meeting as championship leader, whilst Cook will be hoping to see his recent performance issues resolved. Turkington will be hoping that he can get his title challenge back on track, while Sutton will be looking to bounce back from his first DNF of the season.

Both Parfitt and Butel are set to return to the grid after missing the last meeting, with the grid back up to 29 cars.

Cook is now on 21 straight points-scoring races, with local hero Butcher on a run of 14 consecutive races in the points. What chance an all-Scottish podium during the weekend? The crowd will be hoping to hear Flower of Scotland played at the circuit – and we are fairly certain to hear Ting-A-Ling-A-Loo at some point!

The first BTCC meeting at Knockhill was held in 1992, making this a fairly recent addition to the calendar as the series branched out of England to include races in Scotland and Wales. The 1992 meeting was a memorable one, with heavy rain dominating proceedings. A future WRC champion by the name of Colin McRae made a guest appearance that day for BMW – although his performance was not without incident. After finishing a credible eighth in the first race, he was disqualified from race two for a dangerous manoeuvre overtaking Matt Neal.
Alain Menu also had a weekend to forget – he broke his leg in an accident involving a paddock quad bike after qualifying and took no further part in the rest of the season.
John Cleland also found himself disqualified from a race that day, for ignoring a black flag in race one. The podium for race one saw Jeff Allam take the top step, ahead of Tim Harvey and Andy Rouse. Race two saw Tim Harvey take the win ahead of Allam and Cleland.

A relatively short circuit, many drivers describe the track as being like no other on the calendar. High kerbs make for a common photo opportunity of seeing a car up high on two wheels, and the undulations make cars very unstable. A current driver has previously claimed that you do not drive Knockhill in the traditional way. Instead of slow in, fast out – they said you try and carry as much speed as possible through the corner and hold on tight!!

NGTC machinery may not seem ideally suited to this circuit, with the 2012 race wins going to S2000 machinery – Collard taking a pair of wins. Turkington repeated this feat in 2013, indicating that the circuit seems to favour RWD. In 2020, RWD machinery again took the first two race wins, Sutton claiming both before home favourite Rory Butcher took the race three win.

2021 continued the trend of RWD success, with Turkington taking R1 and Sutton in R2. BTC Racing’s Honda also looked good though, with a podium double in race one. Race two saw a RWD 1-2, with Hill getting the third podium place behind Turkington. Race three saw one of the moves of the season by Ingram to get ahead of Jelley out of the hairpin and take the win. Proctor finished second ahead of Jelley – making the podium score for the weekend 5-4 in favour of FWD.

Qualifying will be on the ITV Hub at www.itv.com/btcc, with the Sunday coverage on ITV4.




A weather forecast this far ahead for Scotland is likely to change, but currently it shows that Saturday and Sunday are both predicted to be 17deg temperatures with a 75% chance of rain.