Changes announced for 2013 BTCC

The British Touring Car Championship has announced a number of changes for the 2013 campaign, with a new tyre and tougher penalties among the changes announced by series director Alan Gow.

At nine out of the ten events in 2013 – Thruxton being the circuit where the option isn’t available – the NGTC teams will have a softer tyre available for one of the races each weekend, which has to be specified ahead of qualifying. The tyre however, can’t be used in qualifying.

If the race which they have elected to use their soft tyre is wet, it will then be allocated to the first dry race that weekend – and if the whole weekend is a wet weekend, the tyre doesn’t transfer over to the next weekend.

The tyre allocation for the weekend – 16 Dunlop slick tyres – hasn’t been changed with this change. Also, the choice of a split tyre choice has been scrapped for 2013. Each race must see a complete set of one type of tyre used, thus ruling out the slick front/wet rear option.

Another change announced for 2013 is a tougher penalty system, with a three strikes rule coming into force. After a driver receives two driving offence penalties, their third penalty will see them demoted six places on the grid for the first available race after the penalty.

For each third penalty after this, the same system will be in force in addition to any other penalties a driver may receive for an on track digression.

The lap-time turbo boost method will continue into 2013 with some refinements made to the way the boost levels are calculated.

Three areas have been refined for the 2013 campaign, and the exact baseline boost levels will be calculated ahead of the season opener at Brands Hatch at the end of March.

The areas of refinement for the lap-time turbo boost adjustments are:

• The amount of change to the boost, whether an increase or decrease will be reduced from the 2012 levels.
• Instead of the boost adjustments affecting all cars/chassis, it will be applied to either drivers’ or teams instead, though the exact details are yet to be finalised.
• The frequency of the boost adjustments will be finalised instead of it being calculated over a rolling two weekend average.

All of the teams were unanimously agreed to the keeping of the lap-time based adjustments for the 2013 campaign.