Things were always better in the past, right? Not a bit of it. There are countless examples in our safer, better performing, more reliable, better built and more efficient road cars of today, and even some evidence in motorsport, too.

The common conception was that the British Touring Car Championship, which kicks off again at Brands Hatch this weekend, was at its best in the Super Touring days of the 1990s, with big-name drivers racing works cars in front of big crowds. 

Yet speak to those who’ve competed across several BTCC eras, as we do in this week’s magazine, and the truth is we’ve never had it so good as today. A 30-strong grid of cars, often covered in their entirety by a few tenths of a second in qualifying, and then racing bumper to bumper across three action-packed races that often produce more excitement in an afternoon than Formula 1 does over an entire season. 

BTCC ringmaster Alan Gow points out that motorsport is designed first and foremost to entertain. And the BTCC delivers just that: entertainment. It is now also the UK’s only motorsport on free-to-air TV. So tune into ITV4 this Sunday, remove the rose-tinted spectacles of the ’90s and revel in how good it is today.

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