BTCC New BTCC tyre rules for 2013

[Brogan]

Oh dear, the silly tyre rules are spreading...

The Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship has introduced a significant change to its tyre regulations for 2013.

At nine of the championship’s ten events (the exception being Thruxton), drivers in the latest NGTC-specification cars will have one set of a new ‘soft compound’ Dunlop tyres at their disposal, which will offer superior performance to the standard compound tyre.

These tyres must be used in one of the three races at each event and drivers must nominate, prior to Saturday's qualifying session, which particular race they elect to use them in. However, they cannot be used for qualifying.

Other teams and drivers won’t know in which race their competitors have chosen to use the soft compound tyres until the cars go to the grid; the tyres will have a special marking to make them easily identifiable for rivals as well as trackside spectators and TV audiences.

The BTCC rules are already quite contrived and championsips and races have been very close for the last few years so I don't understand why they feel the need to introduce another artificial element.

http://www.btcc.net/html/generalnews_detail.php?id=3253

 

[gethinceri]

I agree, fixing what isn't broken.

 

[Galahad]

Once you've got success ballast and performance-related boost restrictions, a soft tyre joker seems to add little more to the contrivance.

I felt that the racing in the second half of this season was less entertaining than previously - probably due to half the grid having been landed with pressure drops by then - so if this spices things up, that's fine with me.