Despite one podium in the British Touring Car Championship at Donington Park GP, a weekend of woeful reliability issues plagued Team VERTU and Restart Racing.
During a Donington Park outing that saw Adam Morgan continue to star in his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon, contrasting fortunes saw almost-everything go wrong for three of the six Hyundai i30N Fastbacks.
Even then, it was another weekend of not enough for a fourth – reigning Drivers’ Champion Tom Ingram.
Ingram would climb well from P9 to the final podium position in Race 2, but couldn’t overtake Ash Sutton despite a tyre and TOCA Turbo Boost advantage.
Such has been the story throughout 2026, really, as Sutton’s new NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus Saloon has been at least one better than Ingram’s Hyundai far more often than not.
The outcome leaves Ingram understandably frustrated, with the now-moustacheless Team VERTU man cutting a resigned figure during his post-Race 2 media obligations.
“It’s tough to take when we had more boost, medium tyre, with Ash on a hard tyre with less boost,” Ingram conceded.
“It’s hard to take to not be able to take it to [Sutton] and compete. But, that’s where we are.”
While NAPA Racing UK are rocking their all-new Focus Saloon for 2026, now the preferred shape for touring car teams, the Hyundai i30N Fastback stands out as one of the oldest packages on the grid.
First run in 2020, being one year older than the Corollas run by Speedworks, the Hyundais are now pushing towards the top percentile of longevity when it comes to the Next Generation Touring Car models.
It does not help that the grid has seen a quartet of new models enter the series since 2025.
Currently, Ingram is threatened by Dan Cammish pushing him outside of the Drivers’ Championship top two for the first time five seasons. Cammish, powered by his new NAPA Ford, is just one of many who have begun to take results from the Excelr8 Hyundai.
Power Maxed Racing’s Audi S3 Saloon has also been a strong-peddler, as has WSR’s 330i MSport, and evidently the high-flying scrap-salvaged Mercedes that CPRL have worked so hard on.
Perhaps, its performance in 2026 could signify that Team VERTU have extracted every bit of pace out of their chassis. After all, this is a car that has seen Ingram claim around 400 points in each of the last five seasons. It can’t have dropped off the boil so suddenly without reason.
Tom Chilton another Team VERTU struggler as his Hyundai packs up again and again
Between Tom Chilton and the soon-to-be-mentioned Chris Smiley, the glorious weekend at Donington was not the greatest showing of reliability for the Hyundai pack.
While the Mountune engine has flown since NAPA’s saloon switch, Team VERTU’s Swindon Powertrains motor has seen a total role-reversal to its fine 2025 form.
Chilton never really got the chance to get his elbows out on Sunday, but the performance gap was noticeable as Ingram struggled to find any opportunity to pass Sutton, even with TOCA Turbo Boost in play.
Though, if there was an award for the most positive person in motorsport, it would likely go to Chilton.
The BTCC veteran was ever the optimist after a weekend which saw his chance of competitiveness ripped out of his hands, posting on X that he ‘had a blast’.
In all three of Sunday’s races, Chilton experienced issue-after-issue that saw his car repeatedly grind to a halt before he could get it re-fired. Once, it caused a Safety Car, but the rest of the time Chilton would have to recover to the pack on his own.
All-in-all, it created a pretty torrid trio of results for the man who claimed his first win of 2026 at Knockhill, with P20, P14, and P17 the reward for his resilience.
“Results wise, this has been a weekend to forget with a number of electrical issues that were outside our control, and which prevented us from making the most of the pace we had in the car,” Chilton lamented.
“In the Qualifying Race we set the third fastest lap and we were the second quickest car out there in Race 3, but we’ve just had an unbelievable amount of bad luck – and weren’t the only ones.
“The team continues to work hard and gave me a package that I felt was capable of winning a race, so it’s frustrating that we weren’t able to build on the victory at Knockhill.
“This is a weekend to put behind us, and move on.”
Restart Racing suffer through a weekend of trial by [mis]fire
When your luck is out, it’s out.
Restart Racing went into the weekend with the excitement of welcoming Dan Lloyd back to the fold, the reigning Independents’ Trophy victor and man who claimed victory for them at Silverstone last year.
However, that joy would not last for long.
A gear lever issue in Free Practice would cost Lloyd half of the session on his return, with the loss even more crucial given the session’s status as the only practice of the weekend.
Once he did get on track, he repeatedly struggled with the rear end. Smiley also struggled with rotation on corner exit, and commented that the car felt strangled in a straight line compared to others.
The result was a relatively disappointing P13 and P16 ahead of Sunday’s Race 1, which would see Smiley hold P13 and Lloyd climb to P15. However, a five-second penalty for overboost would push Smiley back and kickstart the downwards spiral for the team.
Race 2 was far more positive for Smiley, with a climb to P10 rewarding him with the reverse-grid pole position for the final race of the weekend. But, the talk after Race 2 was surrounding Lloyd.
Having dropped places throughout the running, his Hyundai suffered a fuel-line failure and caught fire on the final lap – rendering his car useless for the final race of the day.
Evidently, the racing overlords had noticed the team’s struggles. But, they only offered the pole position to Smiley to cruelly rip hopes from the team once more.
Smiley started well as he chased his first BTCC victory since Rockingham 2018, and did defy the in-form Morgan for one lap, but eventually lost out at McLeans on the second tour.
His compromised exit also saw Aiden Moffat and Dexter Patterson through, before contact from Patterson at Melbourne saw Smiley sent into a half-spin.
With the lead and hopes of a podium lost, ill-fate saw one more opportunity to strike and promptly produced a misfire that ended Restart’s day on the side of the track.
“It’s been a very tough day today,” a frustrated Smiley said.
“I ended up on pole for Race 3, got a good start, got my head down and everything sort of went backwards from there on in.
“I had contact at the Melbourne Hairpin with another car, just took me out at the hairpin. And then a lap later we had an issue with the engine, the engine started to misfire.
“It just kind of sums up our weekend. It’s been a tough one, that’s for sure.”
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