The F1 drivers who took on the BTCC

Two seasons with a family-run Toyota Celica GT in 1977 (aged 17) and ’78 preceded a switch to single-seaters.

But he returned in ’81 when TWR took over the deal to run Audi’s team of 80 GLEs in the 1600cc class. Two wins at Silverstone and Thruxton were the highlights of a year where the Audi was not a match for the Celica or VW Golf GTI.

He also thoroughly trounced team-mate Stirling Moss (their combined F1 careers spanned 46 years!). With the help of BP, he went F3 for 1982 and was now on the path to the top.

4. Derek Warwick

This firm crowd favourite was in the right place at the wrong time when he made his BTCC bow in 1995 – Alfa Romeo’s 155s had gone under the umbrella of Prodrive and lost their lustre. He was back for ’97 with the new Triple Eight team, of which he was a co-founder, having secured the Vauxhall deal.

It was a struggle, and Warwick confessed that he had underestimated the challenge of juggling the BTCC around his car dealership commitments, but he did take a win in the wet at Knockhill in ’98. Extra kudos for his foresight in establishing Triple Eight, Vauxhall’s works team up to 2009, and just being a top bloke.

5. Hans Stuck

The Rover Vitesse squadron dominated the BTCC in 1983 – only to be found illegal partway into ’84, with all titles stripped. There was the occasional fly in their ointment, however, in the form of this German tin-top hero, whose 1970s F1 career had peaked with a couple of podiums with Brabham in ’77.

Stuck drove a BMW 635 CSi entered by Cheylesmore BMW Motorsport in three rounds – he was fifth in the British GP support round and third at Brands, but the highlight was Donington. Here, he beat the Rovers of Pete Lovett and Steve Soper to pole and was narrowly pipped to the flag by Soper after an epic side-by-side scrap. It probably hardly flickered on his radar when, several months later, he found out he’d actually won…

6. Jean-Christophe Boullion

The irony of the former Sauber F1 driver being awarded the Williams Renault Laguna seat alongside Jason Plato for 1999 was that he had originally been earmarked for the drive taken by Plato in ’97.

That story has been thoroughly told by JP, but J-CB finally got his chance when Alain Menu was tempted away by Ford largesse.

Boullion’s BTCC season suffered as Renault fell off the pace; he failed to win, but Plato did so only once. And the modest Frenchman’s tally of 97 points to Plato’s 122 was respectable. Under the radar and unspectacular, but solid. And he beat Menu.

7. Jonathan Palmer

Palmer had a one-off in the same Cheylesmore BMW 635 raced by Hans Stuck in 1983. Then, after an F1 career spent most successfully with Tyrrell, he returned to the BTCC for 1991 at the wheel of a Prodrive-run BMW M3.

That campaign is best remembered for the farcical clash with Nettan Lindgren at Snetterton – and Murray Walker’s commentary – and he was no match for Steve Soper when the BMW talisman drove the sister car.

But there’s no shame in that, and seventh in the championship with a peak of second at Thruxton are no disgrace. Fellow Zakspeed F1 alumnus Christian Danner also had a solo outing, in the Soper car, at Thruxton earlier in the season and took fifth place.

8. Jan Lammers

The diminutive Dutchman was better known as a Le Mans 24 Hours winner with Jaguar than for his stop-start F1 career with minnow teams when he rocked up in the BTCC in 1994 – with the brand-new Volvo 850 Estate run by TWR.

Lammers’s solitary season seemed a bit of a letdown at the time, but few recognised that his younger team-mate Rickard Rydell was an embryonic tin-top superstar.

A tally of 18 points to the Swede’s 27 was, in hindsight, not too shabby. And, with a fifth at Brands, he equalled the Estate’s best result of its time in the BTCC.

9. Johnny Cecotto

BMW’s 1995 programme in the BTCC was a big anti-climax. Out had gone the Schnitzer team led by the charismatic Charly Lamm, along with ’93 champion Jo Winkelhock; in had come Warthofer and a couple of ex-F1 drivers.

Cecotto, whose brief F1 career was spent at Theodore and Toleman, was a multi-title-winning touring car titan with BMW, but his single BTCC season was largely anonymous, peaking with fourth at Knockhill.

By dint of finishing one point ahead in the standings, he gets the nod over…

10. David Brabham

The Australian had just emerged from a harrowing F1 season at Simtek when he joined the Warthofer BMW squad for 1995. Dad Jack had, of course, won races in the series in Ford Galaxies and Mustangs back in the ’60s, and had even taken on Stirling Moss in the 1600cc class for the ’80 British GP support round at Brands Hatch – in a Renault 5 Gordini!

There was no such glory for Brabham Jr, but he did do a good job in running Cecotto close and, like the Venezuelan, peaked with fourth (at Brands and Knockhill).

11. Jean-Louis Schlesser

This French all-rounder had yet to attain F1 notoriety for his clash with Ayrton Senna in the 1988 Italian GP when he played cameo roles in mid-’80s BTCC.

Schlesser started three races in TWR-run Rover Vitesses (two in ’84, one in ’86) and his best effort was beating team-mate Jeff Allam to pole for the ’86 British GP support at Brands. He was second to Allam in the race, but the BTCC was pretty feeble at that time.

12. Gianni Morbidelli

The Italian was a big-name signing to the TWR Volvo S40 attack in 1998. He had only just ended his F1 career (Sauber in ’97) and had looked pretty good in his mid-’90s Italian Superturismo exploits. The problem was that those were in a rear-wheel-drive BMW, and he never adapted to the front-wheel-drive Volvo.

Morbidelli was a distant 11th in the standings without a single podium to his name. Even though team-mate Rickard Rydell was crowned champion, Volvo had no chance of the manufacturers’ title.

13. David Morgan

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it F1 career was far less than one of the shining British talents of early 1970s single-seaters deserved. Morgan’s entry in a second Surtees at the 1975 British GP ended with him among the pile of wreckage when a thunderstorm struck.

He was seemingly well off the BTCC radar when Mitsubishi joined the series in ’80 with its Colt GLX Hatchback, but there Morgan was, partnering evergreen tin-top veteran Barrie Williams. The ‘Hatch’ soon made way for the Lancer saloon, but even that car was only competitive when it rained. Still, Morgan finished one place ahead of Williams in the 1600cc class in both ’80 (seventh) and ’81 (third) – a job well done.

Talking of Colts, we should also mention the second Starion Turbo run in ’85 by Dave Brodie. Neither Vern Schuppan (ex-Ensign, Hill, Surtees) nor Kunimitsu Takahashi (’77 Japanese GP in a Meiritsu Tyrrell) could get it wound up on their respective one-offs at Silverstone, such was its lack of competitiveness.

14. Tiff Needell

It’s fair to describe Needell as a BTCC irregular – 32 races over 15 years – but that was a lot more regular than his one-start GP career with Ensign in 1980. First time out was at Oulton Park in a two-driver ‘enduro’ race, where he shared two Toyota Corollas with Chris Hodgetts and they finished first and second in class (third and fifth overall)!

In another such race at Donington in 1989, he took overall victory with Laurence Bristow in a Ford Sierra RS500. Needell did get a good crack in 1993–94 with a bunch of races for Nissan; in the latter season he effectively replaced fellow F1 old boy Eric van de Poele, and finished with a one-off at Oulton in 2001 in a Super Production class Honda run by Barwell Motorsport. He’ll be very happy that we’ve placed him ahead of…

15. Nigel Mansell

The ‘Mansell Race’ at Donington in 1998 has rightly gone down into BTCC folklore. But this was a huge outlier amid his three outings with the West Surrey Racing-run Ford Mondeo team. Wet weather and safety cars threw several cats among the pigeons, and Mansell led a race that went down as an all-time thriller.

Elsewhere at Brands Hatch and Silverstone, it was something of a disaster, and the 1992 world champion never returned to the series.

16. Roland Ratzenberger

The amiable Austrian was an up-and-comer in the Formula 3 ranks when he answered the call to replace Demon Tweeks boss Alan Minshaw in his BMW M3 during 1988.

Ratzenberger was quick and showed good form, including a class win at Thruxton when the official BMW GB cars of Frank Sytner and Mike Smith hit problems. He made it to F1 in 1994 with Simtek as team-mate to David Brabham – also on this list – only for tragedy to strike during qualifying for the San Marino GP.

17. Johnny Herbert

Slim pickings in the post-Super Touring era… The best was three-time grand prix winner Herbert, who caused something of a surprise when he was named by Team Dynamics as the replacement for James Thompson, who had clashing international commitments, for the final three rounds of the 2009 season.

Herbert did his best in the Honda Civic Type R, but seventh at Rockingham was as good as it got across his nine races. Honourable mentions for Mark Blundell‘s season with the AmD-run Trade Price Cars Audi in 2019, and Martin Donnelly‘s one-off with the recalcitrant Support Our Paras Infiniti in 2015.

18. David Coulthard

The future Williams, McLaren and Red Bull star was a 19-year-old Formula Vauxhall Lotus hotshoe when he was given Vauxhall’s second Cavalier to race in the 1990 round supporting the Brands Hatch F3000 race.

He caused the Dave Cook-run works squad’s mechanics some disgruntlement by putting it into the gravel in both qualifying sessions, but raced well – finishing just 12 seconds behind Vauxhall’s class-winning team leader John Cleland over 15 laps of the Brands GP circuit is not bad at all, even if he was ‘only’ seventh in the division.

19. Stirling Moss

Audi pulled off a PR coup by snaring the great man for its 1980 BTCC entry with the 80 GLE. But racing a front-wheel-drive car on slick tyres was one step too versatile even for Moss. He had two seasons: one alongside Richard Lloyd, whose GTI Engineering team ran the cars in ’80; one with Martin Brundle, when TWR took over the programme for ’81.

There was genuine excitement when Moss led a 1600cc crashfest at Mallory Park before clutch trouble slowed him and he dropped behind the guesting Tony Lanfranchi for an Audi 1-2. He ended his two seasons with four class runner-up results but was outpaced by all his team-mates.

20. Damon Hill

The two-driver races of the late-Group A era featured plenty of fleeting BTCC careers aboard Ford Sierra RS500s. In this bracket we can place Johnny Dumfries, Slim Borgudd and Mike Wilds, but we’re going to give our final spot to Damon Hill.

At the time of the 1989 Donington one-hour race, the ’96 world champion was struggling to establish himself in F3000, so had time on his hands to co-drive Sean Walker’s FAI-backed Sierra.

They finished a strong fourth, Hill managing to cope with having only top gear available during his stint. We should also mention here Guy Edwards, an 11-time GP starter with Hill’s father’s team and with Hesketh – the sponsorship king secured Kaliber backing for Andy Rouse’s Sierra squad and scored a number of podiums across the 1988 and ’89 seasons.