The long-awaited hybrid era of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) debuts in 2022, and with it comes a brand-new formula for the series. The season launch was held on April 12th, ahead of the third and final test before the season gets underway at Donnington on April 23rd.
Despite some relief throughout the paddock in getting the new hybrid formula up and running and all teams starting to get to grips with the new hybrid powertrains, the journey to this point wasn?t all plain sailing, as Chief Executive of the BTCC, Alan Gow, explains, ?Back in 2019 when we announced we?d go hybrid, we didn?t know what the headwinds would be when we set out. Cosworth started the project in the middle of 2019, and then we ran into a global pandemic. All the supply chain issues, cost escalations – plus now the war in Ukraine, which stopped some other parts coming through, it?s been a real struggle, and my hats go off to the teams who put their shoulders to the wheel to get it done. It was f**king hard.? The BTCC moving to hybridisation makes it the first touring car championship in the world to do so, putting it under the spotlight and making it somewhat of a crash test dummy for this technology in this formula.
2022 BTCC cars at season launch. Credit: Stewart Mitchell

?I didn?t want us to be pioneers,? said Gow. ?I would rather someone else did it first, and we could take their learnings, but we can?t just sit there and wait, we had to take the initiativ...