It has been a while, with a long summer break, but the British Touring Car Championship returned to the track last weekend at Snetterton, in Norfolk. Current Champion Fabrizio Giovanardi and Colin Turkington shared the top spot of the podium during the three race event. Turkington was a little fortunate to take the final race win of the day after original

The next round of the BTCC is at Thruxton in Hampshire at the end of this month, but in the meantime here is some more behind the scenes eye candy from the opening Brands Hatch round. BTCC pit garages are highly professional, spotless places: check out the Vauxhall pits. From what I've seen Auto Glym is obviously the number one product around here

The first three races of the 2009 British Touring Car Championship may have lacked the usual outcome of season debuts - ie. half the cars ending up as scrap - but it certainly didn't lack for action. Initially pole man Mat Neal lost the lead off the line to the Rob Collard and Colin Turkington's BMWs. There was the usual dogfight on the sprint

There were some last minute returnees to the first round of Britain's favourite 'roundy-roundy' racing, but none more high profile than crowd favourite Jason Plato. Left high and dry by the works SEAT team closure and having not scored a drive over the winter, British race engineering specialists RML rustled up a car for him: a 2008 works

The British Touring Car Championship is one of my favourite series. As a Brit, I spent many cold and wet weekends at Thruxton, Silverstone and Brands Hatch watching this type of racing. The BTCC is back in ascendance and 2008 looks like being a great year for this series. The cars may look like the cars on the street, but underneath they are true race