2023: NEW HORIZONS

The 2023 season is set to be one of the most exciting, busiest and best supported for the BRSCC in recent history, with a raft of new and returning championships and series being welcomed onto the roster and exciting development in others. Let’s details some of the latest developments for the season ahead:

After two seasons away, the TCR UK Touring Car Championship returns to the BRSCC porftolio courtesy of Maximum Motorsport. Both Stewart and Nicki Lines have been working hard over the last few years to continue enhancing the championship, and 2022 saw it enjoy its most successful campaign to date and its biggest grid numbers. Entries regularly exceeded 20 cars over the course of the year and 2023 is expected to be even bigger and better with the premise of greater numbers, new drivers and new models entering the championship. TCR UK will headline seven BRSCC race weekends and is set to produce more thrilling, exciting and heart-stopping touring car action than ever before!

The brainchild of Josh Cook and his Cooksport racing and performance supply company, the Cooksport Renault Cup is a natural next step in allowing Cooksport to further support their growing customer base and also enhance the company’s racing and race development connections with the Renault brand. For the 2023 season, the Cooksport Renault Cup will see a selection of racing Clios and Meganes coming together to form an exciting new BRSCC racing category.

The superb Milltek Sport Civic Cup also rejoins the BRSCC roster for 2023 as an official support series to the TCR UK Touring Car Championship, bringing more high-quality one-make racing to the Club’s portfolio. Started in 2011, and taken on more recently by Maximum Motorsport, the Civic Cup sees a vast number of EP3 and FN2 generation Honda Civic Type Rs battle it out on track together, with the championship seen as an excellent stepping-stone into touring car racing and especially TCR UK. Having been present with the Club previously, we’re delighted to have them back.

We’re very pleased to welcome the long-standing Hickford Construction MG Metro Cup to the BRSCC’s portfolio for 2023, which joins us having moved across from the MG Car Club. Started in 1992, the Championship has been successful in maintaining it’s objective of providing an easy way into motor racing for drivers with a limited budget. The series attracts a varied selection of drivers, from those who have competed for several seasons to absolute novices. For 2023, the Metro Cup will enjoy a six-event calendar, all on BRSCC meetings, and should provide another incredibly fun element to race weekends going forward.

The Ricci Concept Classic VW Cup is a brand new edition to the BRSCC having joined off the back of running with the Track Attack Race Club. This series caters to a vast variety of Volkswagen and VAG cars including Audis, SEATs and more. In this series, anything from old school Mk1 Golfs to more modern ex-Volkswagen Racing Cup cars can be found here and the grid is split into three classes - Class A for more heavily modified cars, Class B for lesser modified cars and the GT class which is relatively unlimited. The Classic VW Cup runs for the first time with the BRSCC as part of a brand new overarching series.

Conceived by renowned roll cage and part fabricators SW Motorsports and its founder Shaun Woods, the new Audi TT Cup Racing series debuts with the BRSCC in 2023 with plenty of hype, excitement and anticipation built up around itand with good reason. Using the Mk2 generation Audi TT as its base car, drivers and teams purchase a complete kit of parts to transform it into a race-ready machine. To date over 40 build kits have been sold and it’s caused quite the sensation amongst the club racing scene already. We’re very much looking forward to the opening rounds at Brands Hatch in April.

In past seasons, any new BRSCC formulae, be they created in-house or joining externally, usually joined another pre-existing series in order to help it achieve lift off and build its numbers before standing on its own two feet. With the influx of newcomers to the Formulae roster and the recent creation of two new one-make series by the Club, a special new development series christened the Evolution Trophy has been created. Along with the Cooksport Renault Cup and Ricci Concept VW Cup, both the BRSCC’s Mazda MX-5 Mk4 Trophy and BMW 1 Series SuperCup also combine to create one grid together. The concept is to allow all four series to flourish by racing against each other on track, and by season’s end should any of them have grid numbers that are healthy enough, they would be permitted to receive their own standalone grid before another new concept takes the vacant spot. It should prove to be quite fascinating to watch as all four develop!

Formula Foundation is a ground-breaking fully electric single-seater racing project that has been well over a year in development, and the stunning electric race car has been conceptualised, designed, engineered and built in the UK.This is a hugely exciting project for the BRSCC and their project partners RSR Technology Ltd, with the series being aimed at delivering the world’s first club level single seater EV racing opportunity. Formula Foundation is focussed not only toward privateer drivers, but race teams looking to support drivers who may be interested in developing a career in the rapidly growing world of EV racing. The plan is to demonstrate the cars at selected events throughout 2023 before growing towards a potential first full season in 2024.

The BRSCC’s Fiesta Championship and ST-XR Challenge are both going through a major change in format for 2023 with both now dedicated to one specification of car each. The Fiesta Championship sees the ST150 class moved to leave the top ST240 class run and rebranded as the Fiesta ST240 Championship, while the outgoing ST150s will now join the ST-XR Challenge-spec ST150s and that championship will also change its name to the Fiesta ST150 Challenge. The rebrand of both Fiesta contests mark the beginning of new eras for each and they’re set to feature healthy and well-supported grids throughout 2023.