So far we've seen five different drivers take the top spot of the podium, with arch rivals Jason Plato and Matt Neal both leading the way with four wins each. Ebay Motors' driver Colin Turkington has a tally of three in his new BMW 125i, two of those coming from Croft before the summer break. Behind them are our two champions from last season - driver's champion Gordon Shedden and Independent driver's title winner Andrew Jordan, who both have two wins to their names.
The wins only tell half the story though. A mixture of incidents and bad luck sees the five winners currently seperated by just fourty points, with Matt Neal leading from Andrew Jordan by nineteen points. Behind them we see two drivers tied for third place - Shedden and Plato, who are currently thirty six points behind the championship leader Neal, and both being just four points ahead of a very impressive Turkington.
As we all know, nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to touring car racing, which is why we love the sport so much and why it attracts so much attention across the globe. Despite being an impartial fan of the BTCC, I admit that I was expecting the MG duo of Plato and Tordoff to dominate proceedings again at Croft after their strong performance at my home circuit Oulton Park, along with many others presumably. And after qualifying, it seemed that we would be proved right. But this is touring cars - always expect the unexpected, especially at Croft, as quoted by a certain Tim Harvey over the weekend. Boy were we in for a shock or two.
It was a huge surprise for me, and I'm sure many others, to see the 2009 champ Colin Turkington dominate as much as he did at Croft, especially in the final race of the day where he came very close to securing victory in all three of the weekend's races. Considering that the 1 series is a brand new car for the West Surrey Racing team, I would have thought that the first half of the season would be used as a learning curve for the team and drivers, and the cars wouldn't show their full potential until the back end of 2013. To see all three of them dominate at Croft is just one of the many reasons why I love touring cars, and proves once more that absolutely anything can happen at any time during the season. The two wins for Turkington and his second place have really seen him climb up the table. If those BMW's continue to progress as much as they have already and perform consistenly well, then I see no reason why Colin couldn't be looking for his second driver's title in the BTCC, or failing that, at least the Independent's title.
Of course we expect the other four drivers to perform as well as they have for the first part of the season, and I'd be very surprised if any one of them four was out of the title race prior to the finale at Brands. The Honda's of both Yuasa Racing and Pirtek have been as strong as last year, as has the MG6 of Plato. It is also true that they have also had their fair share of issues, but nowhere near as bad so far compared to last year, mainly due to the experience that all the teams have gained from the debut season, which has seen all four drivers really push for as many points as possible, each trying to clinch the drivers title, three of them for another time.
Even though this year's championship contains a record number of NGTC entries, let us not forget that there are still some trusty S2000 cars still out on track, battling for the Jack Sear's trophy. Sadly for the six entrants, there hasn't been as much hype about the Jack Sear's Trophy compared to the other titles up for grabs, but that hasn't reduced the quality and competitiveness of racing that these cars and drivers have given us so far. Leading the way in this championship is fan favourite Lea Wood, with six class wins. He is being very closely followed by Liam Griffin, who once more is driving an S2000 spec Ford Focus ST for the third season in a row, with four wins. Behind them we have two time Independent's champion James Kaye, who has two wins, with Joe Girling, David Nye and Croft racer Jake Hill with one win each. Its been a tough start for the last of the JST drivers Warren Scott, who's had numerous problems in the ex STR Seat Leon.
With a five week break now before the action kicks off again on the Snetterton 300 track, some teams will be looking to take advanatge and try and squeeze in some testing and get rid of any niggles that have affected them in the first half of the season. Looking ahead to Snetterton, I'm expecting another strong performance from Honda, Pirtek and MG. Depending on how much testing can be done, it will also be interesting to watch the progress of the eBay Motors and Airwaves Racing teams, who hopefully will have strong cars going into the latter stages of the BTCC, and challenge the big guns for top spot of the podium
