The Britcar Trophy Championship has enjoyed year-on-year growth, and is set for record grids as it enters it’s third season. Aimed at the one-make and high-end club racer wanting a longer race format, it has made a home for Renault Clios, with their own dedicated class, and for 2022, the G40 Cup has been introduced, a class for the Ginetta G40 model piloted by mature gentleman drivers. Some adjustments to the Class 1 structure should still see a proliferation of the Ginetta G56A model (Axel van Nederveen and Mark Lee being last year’s stars) , and various versions of BMW (Jas Sapra and Bryan Bransom particularly) vying for honours, with the MacG Racing Mazda RX8 and Steve Rothery’s Peugeot 308 also in contention, and a whole raft of new entries being as yet an unknown quantity, while in Class 2, a number of teams that came to the fore as the 2021 season progressed will be looking to capitalize on their performances – the Chandler Motorsport Golf, the Jamsport Nissan 350z, the Preptech endurance-spec Clio and the Ramen Racing Ginetta G40 should be class frontrunners, and there is more to come from Paul Goodlad’s Scirocco, while Kester Cook has reconfigured his Fiesta to run a class below last season. Class 3 features some friendly needle between the VW Golfs of Saxon’s James Alford and TSR’s Tony “The Sheriff” Rodgers, who heads a quintet of the machines, including running two for the Team HARD Academy, featuring young chargers Alasdair Graham, Michael Macpherson, Daniel Truman and Jake Owens. Young drivers feature strongly in the Clio class too – Westbourne Motors have been significant supporters of the class, and promote Jack Meakin and Charlie Hand from their graduate programme to join already-established James Black in two of their four entries, while a further boost to the class comes from Motus One, fielding four cars too. Add to these a further possible ten Ginetta G40s, and we have around 60 entries for the opening round, just about the biggest grid possible for this type of racing.
Words: Steve Wood, photo: Paul Cherry