2024 BTCC season preview: meeting the man who makes it happen

Open gallery The BTCC's 2024 season will be its 67th Gow is decisive but modest - his decisions always reflect the BTCC's best interests Dull it isn’t: evolution of the BTCC formula has proven key to its success Josh Cook will be among those aiming to thwart Ash Sutton this year A crowd-pleasing show is all part of the BTCC package Gow has been at the BTCC helm since the 1990s and the Super Touring era Close News 6 mins read 26 April 2024 Follow @StvCr Alan Gow, boss of the hugely successful Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship for all but three of the past 34 seasons, is the personification of a decisive leader. He spends most of his time making clear, quick decisions aimed at improving what is widely acknowledged to be the world’s best car competition of its kind. For decades, his authority has been every bit as great as Bernie Ecclestone’s was in his Formula 1 heyday. Not that there are many other similarities between Gow and Ecclestone. Bernie was small, enigmatic and scary; Gow is tall and laconic, an Australian immigrant who arrived from a successful Melbourne-based motorsport career in 1990. He thrives on wisecracks and colourful language, and for all his word-is-law authority, he is a remarkably modest man. Related articles “People think all the big decisions come from me,” he says. “But they actually come from me listening. I don’t have a sole franchise on good ideas, so I surround myself with people with interesting opinions, some a lot smarter than I am. So you listen, you sort wheat from chaff, and usually you find the truth somewhere in the middle. I’m a magpie. I’ll pinch anyone’s good idea if I think it will improve the BTCC.” Typically, Gow has a suite of new ideas every year, and it’s the same for 2024. They are designed to sharpen the competition and the spectacle. “If you don’t have great racing,” he says, “you don’t have anything.” This year will be the third for the hybrid powertrains, a world-first he cooked up during lockdown with the help of Cosworth. After one season to find the bugs and a second to iron them out, he’s convinced 2024 will be a great year for hybrids, making the prospect of one driver scoring runaway championship wins (already tough) almost impossible. “This year we’re doubling the boost available through the driver’s push-to-pass button,” he explains. “It’s a combined turbo and hybrid-electric boost, worth about 80bhp. At the first race this season everyone will get 15 seconds of boost per lap. But as soon as a driver wins a race his boost will fall to just one second, and there are graduated reductions down to 10th place. That will really change things.” Latest Reviews Mini Countryman MG 3 Review 8 MG 3 Review Dacia Duster 9 Dacia Duster GWM Ora 03 6 GWM Ora 03 View all car reviews Back to top Gow shrugs off critics who point out that the World Rally Championship launched a strain of hybrid cars and has since binned them. “That was completely different,” he says shortly. “Those cars had big batteries – we don’t – so they were heavy. There were potential safety issues, too, and all the tackle cost £150k per car. That’s not us. Our cars have small, low-voltage batteries. Besides, we have never learned anything for touring cars from rallying…” Gow says there’s an option to increase the boost again for next year, but he doubts they will do it. “You don’t want the guy in front to be a sitting duck,” he says. “A driver needs a chance to defend. We have done a lot of testing with top drivers, and they came away seeing the potential and saying it was great.” Another big change for this year is the way qualifying is organised, using an idea pinched from the Indycar series, which Gow loves. “We will have a half-hour knock-out quali, divided into three 10-minute sessions,” he says.  “Half the field will do the first 10 minutes – a mix of the fast and slow cars – then the rest will do the second session. Everyone will have to get stuck in straight away; there will be no chance to drone around trying to improve the car. Then the top half dozen – the Quick Six, we’re calling them – will run off in the third 10-minute session. It will all make a great spectacle. Some drivers might lose out, but I don’t care. That’s racing.” Back to top For 2024, the BTCC is also bringing back option tyres, because drivers love the opportunity for extra speed and it introduces a bit more jeopardy. But Gow is also cooking an evil refinement into the plan. “If you win,” he says, “you’ll have to do the next race on the hardest tyre. That will make a back-to-back win very difficult. The great thing is it’s something a team won’t be able to manipulate: who would sacrifice a race win so he can be on a softer tyre next time?” Away from the track, the BT