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Today I spent a few hours at Rockingham (Rockingham, Corby, Northamptonshire, England, not Rockingham North Carolina) watching the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) racing.

I guess the BTCC is the closest equivalent to NASCAR we have in the UK now that ASCAR is all but defunct. ASCAR cars were the equivalent of the NASCAR east or west series cars, but the problem being that we only have the one oval circuit suitable for the cars at Rockingham and we only get the one weekend that stays dry, usually the one the racing isn't on, so it didn't really take off. Even at it's height the grids only had 25 cars, which compared to the 43 you get in NASCAR, seems quite pathetic.

BTCC cars are stock saloons with some minor modifications, but have much smaller engines and are designed to run on what the Americans call road courses. That's the big difference between American petrolheads and the rest of the world, in America the oval rules, over here it just doesn't seem to work. Personally, I enjoy both, and can see the positives and negatives in both forms.

The other big difference between the two forms is that NASCAR events run for 300-500 miles and you get the one 4 hour race on race day, whereas the BTCC race day has a number of much shorter races. On the Sunday there are 3 50km (32 miles) races in the BTCC championship, interspersed with a mixture of single make saloon races and single formula open top races, all about the same distance, all lasting about 30 minutes per race.

Anyway, I managed to get a free ticket to this weekend's event from an ex-colleague, Martin. He is one of the happy band of volunteer marshals that make motorsport possible in this country, so am doubly grateful that he's prepared to give up his weekend for the benefit of petrol heads like me.

I timed my arrival just perfectly, the first race of the day had just finished, which were the Porsches, whilst although sound exotic are the most dull race on the card. I checked in with Martin the marshal to see which post he was on and made my way to my seat. Rockingham has a main covered grandstand on the start/finish straight that overlooks the entire oval and infield circuit, so I made my way up to the top and found a seat in time for the Clio cup.

The first three races pass off relatively uneventfully although the rain shower towards the end of the first BTCC race did make for a few spins and slides. So at lunch I agree to meet up with Martin and make my way to the infield paddock. We catch up and chat about the morning's racing, but he had to dash back to his post as he has to be back 10 minutes before the next race cars form on the grid. The next race is the second of the BTCC races, which had some good close racing and some excellent examples of car control but no major accidents.

At this point I check the program of events and realise that there's a two hour gap before the next race that I wanted to see, and seeing that the weather was closing in again I decided to go home and watch the last race at home on TV in the warm and the dry. The bonus being that I got to see the last half an hour of the Liverpool football game as well. However, watching on TV the Clio race provided a pretty spectacular crash and the last BTCC event was held in a torrential down pour, which always makes for fun racing.

I have also watched the coverage of the NASCAR night race from Arizona from yesterday, it was nice to see Dario Franchitti qualify, shame his race pace still isn't quite there. Good finish to the race though, with Johnson just managing to keep enough fuel in the car to make it to the end.

All in all a complete petrol head day. Makes up for the rained off event in California in February.