Photo: PSP Images

Success ballast revised ahead of 2019 campaign

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Revisions to the success ballast levels are amongst a series of changes that will be introduced for the 2019 BTCC season.

Series organisers have revealed that the maximum ballast that can be carried during the season will be reduced from 75kg to 54kg due to the ‘incredibly closely matched performance of the current cars’.

The top ten drivers will continue to carry additional weight, with the remaining levels being adjusted inline with the revised new maximum.

1st: 54kgs
2nd: 48kgs
3rd: 42kgs
4th: 36kgs
5th: 30kgs
6th: 24kgs
7th: 18kgs
8th: 12kgs
9th: 6kgs
10th: 6kgs

Elsewhere, the ‘strike’ system has again been tweaked, with a strike now being handed out automatically for serious offences on track, which will also result in a 20 second time penalty being added to a drivers race time. Less serious incidents will continue to handed reprimands, with three reprimands resulting in a driver being handed a ‘strike’.

The ‘strike’ tally system remains unchanged, and both reprimands and strikes will remain on drivers record for a period of twelve months.

In terms of qualifying, any driver who causes a red flag will now lose their best time to that point in the session and be excluded from rejoining, whilst the other change revolves around tyres.

During the Snetterton meeting, drivers will be forced to run different tyres in each of the three races without nominating before hand, whilst at Knockhill, the Medium compound tyre that is usually used as the Prime will become the Option that must be used in one race; the Soft tyre instead being the standard.

The Soft will be used as the Option at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and Silverstone, with the Hard tyre being used at Donington Park and Croft – as well as at Thruxton where it is only tyre used.

All changes will come into force at Brands Hatch in early April during the opening meeting of the year.

Further ahead, the new hybrid power units scheduled for introduction in 2022 may be brought forward a year if all key parameters can be met in time for an earlier launch.