Not Winning but Still Winning- The Story of the BTCC's MIND NUMBING Points System
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- How can a guy who finishes 12th every race win the championship outright? It should never be able to happen.
But it did in the BTCC for about 33 years as they decided that if you won your class you'd get the same points as the race winner, instead of breaking things up per class and then having an overall championship. Something so mind numbing it wasn't until the 1990s they fixed it for something much simpler.
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Ah alright that's understandable. What the BTCC should've done was to award multiple trophies for each class.
Basically what the WEC and IMSA are doing.
Doesn't the NLS in Germany essentially still have this system? Each class has a champion but then through some formula based on the number of entries in the class they decide an overall winner.
Yes, exactly like Endurance. I think that's fair, so much than seeing someone winning the outright Championship by always arriving 15th-20th overall, but 1st in GTE-Am.
They did do that. Entrants could win their class as well as the overall title, both if they dominated their class.
Am I the only one who finds this understandable? I like it. It rewards consistency in your class and stops there being 4 titles, with only one being treated as "the" title. Every driver can win.
Imagine bumping into you here. Yeah I get it too, I would just join the class with the lowest amount of competitors, easy win
But imagine you’re a new viewer. You’re thinking “hang on, that guy gets points for 5th but he finished 8th and that guy gets the same points as the winner but he came twelfth. How is that fair/practical?!
Yeah I think knowing motorsport screws with how you would normally think about these things. Especially if you were a new viewer to the very popular BTCC series with no prior experience. I must say now that I think about it, i am glad the format has changed, it makes for a far more exiting race programme, watching someone win from 8th would be quite annoying haha.
@@AidanMillward I understand that, but the same can be said for multiple qualifying sessions, Manufacturer points vs Independant, multiclass series etc etc. I don't think it's any more confusing than most series.
@@imthecrabby I'm glad the series as a whole has changed, yes. Touring car should be 1 car class, which makes this discussion and points system redundant. The series is better for it, but I do like this way of handling points for multiple classes.
Now Aidan can do a show explaining Nascar's points system.
Nascar doesn’t understand it’s points system
Even Aidan can’t explain something that stupid…
@@davidburke6139 500 points if the driver's wife chews tobacco. 100 points for each crewmember who is married to a first cousin.
The way points are awarded isn't difficult to understand. It's when you get to the reset and elimination point of the season that it becomes nonsense.
There's different types of points awarded throughout various stages of each race but it all doesn't matter because whoever wins the last race is champion.
It stops being confusing if you look at it as running a class A race and a class B race on the same track at the same time... and then putting both into the same championship for Reasons
The Champion came from the top class 6 times and only twice was it Andy Rouse, twice it was Frank Gardner and the other two were Robb Gravett and the recently deceased Roy Pierpoint.
The ATCC had a similar system in the 70s, but there was only two classes and the top four outright finishers got additional points which meant that none of the lower class drivers ever actually won the championship (although I think one or two might have ended up in the championship lead at some points)
To me this is the best system, because the best driver in the fastest car has a very strong chance of winning. But if you ran a Mini Cooper S in the 1960s or an Alfetta GTV6/BMW M3 in the 1980s, you would still have a chance, so you'd get full grids with cars from different classes and the teams with smaller cars can get a sponsor, because they still have a chance in the championship.
I think in the 80s atcc still had it so smaller engines get more points. Which is how Nissan got into the championship fight in 83 and BMW got extra points with the M3 in 87
Just did some googling and while no one from a lower class won the championship there were a couple of quite a few 3rd place championship finishes over the years.
In 1975 Christine Gibson in an Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 had 4 straight class wins to be close to the championship lead half way through the season and in 1981 Colin Bond in a Capri v6 won all bar one round of the under 3000cc class to finish a close 3rd overall. If it wasn't for either Peter Brock and Dick Johnson taking all bar one of the 1st and 2nd race places between them during that season then Bond might have emerged as overall champion.
@@scordatura9259 Rules of the time of course, but I don't know how CAMS thought a turbo 2 litre Nissan Bluebird was equivalent to an under 3000cc car. It took 2nd on the grid at Bathurst that year (not ATCC rounds back then) and pole the following year. It wasn't lacking horsepower.
@@DPG-Guitar yeah good thing they immediately changed it next year. As far as I know even Nissan weren't so keen on the old scoring system which is part of the reason they withdrew the final round
The NLS (former VLN) point system is similar-ish. A GT3 winner gets the same points as a TCR winner. But there is an additional rule that you get less points when your class has less than 7 starting cars.
I was just going to bring up NLS.. that point system is wild
Other driver's champion without winning a race:
Emilio Alzamora the 1999 F.I.M. 125cc world champion
Matt Crafton the 2019 NASCAR truck champion
Austin Dillion did it in 2013 in the Xfinity series as well
I remember the late Tony Lanfranchi winning the BTC on multiple occasions using a 1300 cc Moskvich sh*tbox. It was effectively the best (?) 1300 cc in its class and Lanfranchi the best jobbing driver. The other drivers in all the other classes took points off each other as there was more competition and thus less points!
The system wasn’t exclusive to the BTCC, the European touring car championship ran a similar points structure , as indeed did the 1987 WTCC.
The Australian Touring Car Championship ran a class based points structure (but with bonus points for outright results) until the end of 1987 too
The World Sportscar Championship had similar points scoring too, in the manufacturers title at least.
Working through seasons on rFactor, you encounter stuff like this occasionally. Currently doing the '88 ETCC, where you have a simple 20-15-12-10... etc points system, but each class is scored independently, plus points for outright places, plus manufacturer's points, means that simple points system has to be applied FIVE TIMES. The 1971 Rothmans Formula 5000 Championship is currently on hold, and it had a similar drop-score system to F1 at the time... except long and short races were scored independently, so it was your best four out of five races under 100km, and your best five out of six races OVER 100km, or something like that. Confusing AF to work out on a spreadsheet.
Meanwhile the 1975 ATCC was very nearly won BTCC style, from the lower class, as the outright wins were shared around between various Torana drivers while the class wins were monopolised by Christine Gibson (and she was pregnant at the time!). I very quickly realised the way to win a BTCC was to pick the class with the least competition.
awesome video, definately an important moment for the BTCC that the points system was changed to something less confusing
Imagine if this arrangement had been in place in F1 in 1987. As winner of the Jim Clark Trophey (for the naturally-aspirated cars), Jonathan Palmer would've been WC, Streiff the runner-up, and Nelson Piquet only 3rd...
I like when series hand out points for pole, most laps led, and fastest lap. Those are all things earned on merit and deserve reward
I am a german, and have to say, watching some of the old BTCC races, ans seasons reviews, i like the class-system more then the DTMs no-class system. Best example for what i mean is when in the late 80s the RS500 out-classed everyone else in the DTM. They then put in the air-restrictors to the turbos until the RS500 where out-classed. They tried to force a balance into a groupe of cars which whre from too different classes to begin with. The class-system in the BTCC lead to more variaty on cars and manufacturers.
"this side of NASCAR" perfect! Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Oh, I like the idea of a point for leading a lap. That could result in some delicious silliness in F1.
Wow, I never realised that's how the old points system worked. And you're right, it was confusing....😂😂
Ok it's not casual-viewer friendly, but perfectly simple to understand. Personally I prefered the approach as it gave everyone a chance of the overall title. But I guess we all tend to prefer whatever we grew up with. I still think there are pros and cons to different point systems though.
There should have been separate championship standings for each class. But scoring each class separately makes perfect sense; far better that than having the lower class(es) scrabbling around hoping to pick up the odd point here and there.
It's either that or you use some kind of multiplication system, like maybe winner of the lowest class gets 24 points, next class up it's 48, next up gets 72 and so on, so that someone who dominates a lower class could still end up above the also-rans of the top class. But even that would be flawed, as someone with lots of money and a fragile ego could simply throw lots of resources into winning a class full of little teams with shoestring budgets.
The idea was simple enough. Each class was a race within a race and people loved the idea of seeing lots of different makes and types of car in one race.
Absolutely! And in some cases manufacturers had a range of cars that could possibly be eligible for each class as long as they got the models homologated. Some were factory run efforts, some were semi-works and some were pure privateers.
Was watching some 90’s btcc on RUclips the other day, it’s fucking magnificent
Did you watch highlights or the full races? Cos while there was a bit of action, the highlights to present it in a different way to how it actually was. Bit like the old
F1 stuff.
@@AidanMillward a bit of both, even the full races are decent. Just good honest racing.
I think I’m a similar age to yourself and it just reminds me of being a kid watching it with me dad with the cars our parents had at the time.
Rob Gravett was the other champion from Class A
Andy Rouse is still one of my racing legends to this day ♥
Rouse is often forgotten in the sea of Platos, Neals, Suttons and Clelands of the world.
@@AidanMillward how can people simply forget "Mr Touring Cars" himself though? 😥
My favourite of all time is Cleland but coz I was a ford fan it was always radisich
The top guys from the Group 1 or Group A days are still some of the best drivers (and engineers) in motorsport history. Would easily be on a par, or better, than most of the so called touring car drivers of today (IMHO). People like Plato, Turks, Flash, Matt Neal and a couple of others started out when the top guys of the old days like Rouse, Soper etc were coming to an end but learned so much from them.
@@chunterer and adding to their mystique is that the old guard tended to build their own cars as well as race them :)
Wasit really confusing, though? It's just that drivers from every class could become champion and the one who was the best *in his class* was crowned. Each class had its own championship and the performance relations *among classes* didn't really matter, champion was just the one most dominant in their class. While it was weird and probably unfair, I would not really call it confusing.
Yeah, it's not really that different from any other multi-class structure like IMSA or WEC, the only difference being that you stick all the independently-scored class standings into a combined table for your overall standings. I can see why it fell out of favour though, a lot of folks don't really care for multi-class racing in the first place and at the end of the day it's one less thing to explain.
I remember it being perfectly understandable at the time. Plus it was more entertaining than the the bop'd silhouette entertainment it is now.
If you’re new to the sport it’d be confusing. You’d be wondering why the guy who finished 8th got points for finishing 6th but the guy who finished 7th has the points of the winner.
Having to explain that every weekend would get too much.
@@AidanMillward but by the time you'd watched a handful it became pretty clear. Try to think of if as a form of BOP between classes where the desired results weren't created decided i behind closed doors but were set out at the start of the season and remained the same all year.
Overall champ today in most series is simply the guy with the best OVERALL series results. Champions in classes mostly are scored per class. And separate from the overall points.
I enjoyed that fella, short and sweet. Such a strange but true tale 👍✌️
The interview with John Cleland with 1990's btcc on his win in 1989 is very interesting. From memory he doesn't really feel like he had won the title.
He was going for first.
Ego!
I think the idea was to attract manufacture support in the smaller classes.
It also means that private entrants in the smaller class can get a sponsor, because they have a chance of a decent championship placing.
I would love a closer look at the cars of btcc over the years - differences, development, crazy tech, cheating stories, etc. Pretty please 🥺
I don't see why there's confusion. If you win your class, you get the points for winning. If you come 2nd in your class, you get the points for coming 2nd. Add them all up, and the most consistently fastest driver in their class wins the championship, regardless of the engine size. Not confusing at all.
I didn't hugely object to the system. The cars were actual cars rather than silhouettes, and whilst weird Civics won titles, we all knew the fire-spitting RS500s really did. Edit - I guess I find it as easy to understand as realising why GTP guys 'win' a WEC race/season despite not winning overall is easy. Not that I'm saying you don't, just that's how I view it.
it's entirely logical as a class divided points structure RIGHT UP UNTIL YOU REALISE THAT THERE'S NO INDEPENENT CLASS CHAMPIONSHIPS
That system actually makes perfect sense for cash strapped privateer's local championship, if you think about it. But even in 50s Britain, it was extremely big stretch to call it good for national championship
Actually, i have raced more complicated.
How about a 2 race format, where points are awarded according to finish position in each race, BUT the podium was on agglomerate times for the 2 races! So the podium can be full of people who didn't win either race, nor get the points for race wins or podium results. It always seemed like a lucky dip to see who got a trophy.
That doesn't seem complicated at all. In bike and sidecar racing we often have multiple categories on track at the same time. We win and earn points for our category. So you can be 10th over the line but 1st on category.
The only difference is, we compete for a title for each category, so you know which one you have won.
For sidecars, you can see the F1 and F2 are physically different, while bikes we normally run different colour number plates so you can tell. Maybe its because I've done it for 20+ years but i don't find it difficult to follow 🤷♂️
John Cleland said in an interview recently that his 1995 championship was much more meaningful than the 89 one since he won in 89 under the old class rules.
I think the problem was that the points weren't weighted at all, unless the category was under-subscriber (Like D-class in 1988). Like to win the title in your D class Golf, you would have to drive practically perfection to beat the Cosworths or whatever, as you scored 18 points for a win where they scored 24.
Jeff Uren, John Love and Alec Poole are champions but have never had an outright win. Bill McGovern only has 1 outright win despite being a 3x Champion.
If I’ve remembered correctly
I seem to remember that Vauxhall came in to the championship with the Astra with virtually no competition in its class. Didn't Cleland win his first couple of championships that way?
Cleland won in a cavalier and a Vectra. Vauxhall dominated after super touring ended.
@@AidanMillward Cleland won in an Astra (1989, not the top class) and Cavalier (1995, the last year before Vectras came)
The Astra was pretty much a full works effort (run by Dave Cook for Vauxhall) against a couple of well driven but privately run Golf GTi 16vs and Mike Jordan's outdated Pug 309 GTi.
The 2 baby classes (1600-2000cc & up to 1600cc) could conceivably have got stronger if Group A continued as there were a lot of hot hatchbacks being launched in the 80s and 90s.
Not confusing at all. It was Multi-Class racing, with points awarded for each class. Essentially, there was a separate race for each class - they just happened to run simultaneously.
In the days before large scale manufacturer involvement & mass sponsorship, doing it this way got cars on the grid (so that the races could happen), and rewarded consistency of results irregardless of the class. With the lack of reliability inherent to the cars of the era, if someone in a lower capacity class got 10 class wins, they got more points than the guy who won 6 races outright in a higher capacity class, but blew up/crashed in the other 4 races.
This multi class system only became an issue when TV got involved, as prior to that point, the vast majority of race fans got their info from weekly or monthly magazines, who had the space to explain why the championship leader wasn't the overall race winner. TV's "all action, no info" highlight packages didn't allow the time for an explanation of how the system worked, then the introduction of SuperTouring regulations killed it off entirely...
Just imagine having this points system in the WEC 😬
Toyota would've still won at a canter the last few years
@@Ramtamtama True
Don't give the ACO anymore ideas, they barely make the rules they have work as is.
@@RACECAR 😅
For some reason, probably down to having different class structures based usually on engine capacity, touring car racing around the world has had some weird and wacky point score systems. Here in Australia we've had some whoppers over time.
Is it possible that this points system, and the fact that having a smaller car was beneficial, ultimately led to our “stock car” racing looking so different to the US NASCAR and Australian v8s?
they went back to big(ish) cars in the 90s with Super Touring, but I suppose so.
1988 was a good example of this Andy Rouse nearly won every race but Frank Sytner won the title, inspite of his highest finish only being 4th.
As I said in my comment. Rouse had car troubles at the first round at Silverstone. Beaten by sopher at Thruxton then a puncture at the final round at Silverstone. Sytner was beaten only once in his class but had to fight Ratzenburger in every race and his own teammate stealing points off him at snetterton didn’t help him either. As a regular viewer it made a bit more sense at the time.. looking back I can see why people hated it
@@Woody93185 Was that the "Tyres" incident thats been shown on clips shows?
@@Woody93185 The Rat wasn't in all season, and I think the idea was he was supposed to be assisting Sytner. He was a BMW works driver the previous year! Not sure Prodrive were very keen for him to take points of Frank so they got Will Hoy in for a couple of rounds later on as back up! I have also long suspected Rouse got his mate David Sears out in a black John Maguire run M3 to try and 'interfere' with Sytner for the last 2 or 3 rounds but it didn't really work.
1986 and 1987 Chris Hodgetts won the BTCC title this way, he had no real opposition in his class (bellow 1600 cc)
There’s an article online about that
Grat vid as always, the greater than sign is wrong though. You’ve put it so that it’s all less than 2700, it should be 2700
I don't get what's so confusing about it. They get points based on where they finished in the class they're in. That's not confusing.
The BTCC basically tried to do multi class in an offline Assetto Corsa championship lol
In a way it does make total sense as well, it's just several rqve formulas thrown into one
‘This is the most convoluted points system…’
Me: *thinks about NASCARS playoff season*
‘…. this side of NASCAR’
Me: Nice
Sopwith was pissed off about coming second, so he must have been fuming when they brought in the Jack Sears trophy all those years later.
It sounds like my way to win High Points in swimming meets for Masters.
So, each class counts as their own race on the same track and lap count as everyone else? And results from each class goes into an overall standing with ALL classes represented?
I don’t understand the difficulty of this point systems. There are 2 (or more classes) each class has his own point s. It is no different in the WEC on this moment. You get points for the position in your own class. Cars in other classes where you are in front don’t count. So the only strange thing is that the “overall” win can be go to a lower class driver…. In wec there is only an overall podium where it is possible that lmp2 or even gte or gta’s are represented. Put point wise that podium does not meant anything
Only 11.5k remaining for Robert Moreno. I hope it’s ready :)
Today I learned Status Quo's Rick Parfitt has a son who races in BTCC!
...Yeah but you kept saying, "This side of NASCAR." And trying to navigate THAT labyrinthine championship setup...
Seems like they should have just had class champions like MotoGP. Valentino Rossi has 7 World Championships in 500cc/MotoGP, one in 250cc and one in 125cc.
3:43 now for the real question: which car is reflected in the bodywork of that black Mk2? No prizes
On the flip side, why should the slower class cars be in with no chance of winning an overall title? Sure they won't beat the faster class cars but I don't see that points system as a problem. If anything, the modern points system portrays the arrogance of bigger budget = better drivers. Especially in the non-pro world, the best drivers don't drive the fastest cars - they drive the best cars they can afford.
The other one was Robb gravett I believe in 1990
wasn't it Rob Gravett who won the 5th group A title in 1990?
Someone else has already said so, so I’d say yes.
Now do how dropped scores cost Reid the title in 2000 and make that make sense
Now tell us how a GT series can have an individual champion when each driver of a given vehicle is awarded the points of that vehicle's results. 😉
It's always brought up in the context of the driver. But this points allocation allows for cars of all types of engine capacities to compete for a national championship on an equal footing. It's fair enough. Some guys may've won the championship because of weaker competition in the smaller classes, but then the main reason the drivers in the bigger cars won was that they had faster cars. A true millennial question.
Super Touring effectively allowed the smaller cars to compete for the outright championship when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Super touring size 2 litre saloons and hatchbacks would only have been in Class C in the old format. Albeit they had more advanced racing engines than their Group A predecessors.
Bought my Olive Green T5-R after watching BTCC 👍
Isn't this how John Cleland won is 1st championship
Is it odd I understood that word for word?
Yeah rouse had to work really hard in 1989 in particular against Rob Gravett Tim Harvey and so on. But guys like John Cleland in the frankly incredible Astra just had the easiest time ever to win class C.. heck he was even giving some of the slowest Sierras a hard time sometimes.
Rouse should for sure have won the title in 1988 though. He had a slightly easier time but car failures at the first and last rounds of the season at Silverstone cost him. As did being beaten by sopher at Thruxton.. Sytners Championship in 1988 was in my opinion more legit though as he had a big fight with Ratzenburger that year.. Oh and his teammate Mike smith stealing points off him. Most famously at Snetterton. Didn’t exactly help Sytner either.
I do agree though that the system back then was mind numbingly stupid
The manufacturers building the homologation specials killed Group A and the class format. You ended up with one only or two cars that were remotely competitive for each class. The governing bodies could have and should have stepped in to ban the one off 500 run specials. They were spectacular but hugely expensive to run. 15 Sierras in Class A, half 6 or 7 M3s in Class B was a bit monotonous. It was best a few years earlier, huge variety and a multitude of potential steeds for any of the classes.
It's possible you could still have a major multi class touring car series these days, there are enough cars in manufacturers ranges with various engine capacities but all people are interested in is 'Silly Unnecessary Vehicles' pick up trucks and hybrid rubbish.
I mean Ford cancelling the Fiesta, still one of the most popular small cars (an ST Class C level car would be mega!) is crackers!
Still better than NASCAR's Playoff "system".
wasn't thi system on British Gt in the 90s ?
03:33 Should be >2700cc instead of
Sorry but should be >2700cc or 2700cc +
I second this!
nic hamilton should have been in 'z' class....even if there were no drivers in class c to x
So somehow even worst than the Nascar playoffs. Basically just race in a class with less cars to get a higher championship position
Didn't Joh Cleland win one.
Love ya content my midland homeboy but I do believe that you used the incorrect mathematical symbol for greater than 3000cc…..
I’m no dunce but I always believe < means up to, and > means greater than.
I remember it as < looks like an L, like less than.
I think all of the american series have some sort of complicated points structure. Indycar (bc of everyone scoring) and imsa are not exactly easy either
Participation trophies are a thing in American schools
@@Ramtamtama yeah. But These are Kids, not full grown-men
You mean >2700cc?
Now do NLS points system 😂
BREH....
>2700cc*
The "Supertouring" era will always be my favorite. The low ride height and tucked wheels is just perfect 🤌