2009 British Touring Car Championship Season
The 2009 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship season was the 52nd British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) season. It began at Brands Hatch on the Indy layout on April 5 and finished after 30 races over 10 events on the Grand Prix layout at Brands Hatch on October 4. Colin Turkington won the championship for the first time, ahead of Jason Plato and Fabrizio Giovanardi.
The season also saw Airwaves BMW score their first win in the series when Rob Collard won the second race of the day at the opening meeting at Brands Hatch. The team seemed to have added a second win in race three as Jonathan Adam crossed the line first but he was demoted to second after making contact with Jason Plato handing Plato the win.
Andrew Jordan became the youngest driver to qualify on pole at Donington after team-mate Fabrizio Giovanardi was excluded for failing technical checks.
Also, Stephen Jelley took his first win in the series at the first race at Rockingham. He followed this up with another victory in race 3, a race that saw Tom Chilton become the first driver to score a podium position in a Ford Focus following a collision between Plato, Turkington and Plato's team mate James Nash.
At the final meeting at Brands Hatch, Chilton took pole position becoming the first Ford driver to do so since 2000. All three races were won by Jason Plato, becoming only the second driver to do so following Dan Eaves' hat-trick at Thruxton in 2005; but this was not enough to win the title. Colin Turkington became British Touring Car Champion for the first time, coincidentally becoming the first Northern Irishman to do so.
Former British Grand Prix winner Johnny Herbert contested the final three meetings in a Team Dynamics Honda Civic.
Read more about 2009 British Touring Car Championship Season: Entry List, Calendar, Championship Standings
Famous quotes containing the words british, car and/or season:
“Never forget that you are Germans. Never forget that you are Nazis!”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Admiral Lutjens (Karel Stepanek)
“Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The season developed and matured. Another year’s installment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)