Real racing

Went to see the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone on the weekend, overall a very good meeting, but Silverstone was very cold on Sunday. The touring car races themselves were great close racing pretty much from start to flag which is what it's all about. Salon racing is just so much better to watch as a spectator than any single seater formula.

Support races for the weekend:

• Ginetta G50 Cup:

Three races of 22 laps each is too much for this series. The cars get spread out over the race distance and it can turn into a bit of a yawn. It isn't helped by Nathan Freke running away with the championship. Still race 2 of the meeting was actually good, a very pleasant surprise.

• Ginetta Junior Championship:

I love these races, there's always someone overtaking someone else and the winners of the series have been pretty varied. This series is for 14-16 year olds so shows us the potential talent of the future and there are girls in this doing very well mixing it up with the lads. This is what it's about; both sexes competing equally, not like the patronising horror of Formula Woman.

• Porsche Carrera Cup GB:

It could be good and the organisers are trying; they provide a large number of cars on each grid to cover the two 28 lap races but since there are three different classes running, the racing isn't as close at it would seem at first glance. In my opinion this could be improved by trimming the number of laps to encourage closer racing. After 28 laps the field is spread out and the crowd are just hoping for someone to spin out for some excitement. And it happened! In race 2 Tim Harvey of the ITV commentary team and reigning champion ended up beached in the gravel at the start of the complex.

• Renault Clio Cup:

These are the lot who used to try and win the race on the first corner. They've matured a bit and the racing really is now like the junior touring cars which it's billed as on the race programme. Sure some people end up in the gravel, but most make it out again and fight back. Even though the championship leader is 80 odd points ahead the racing is close, these guys have drive to win and clearly are having a lot of fun on the track.

• Formula Renault UK:

Not entirely sure why there's a single seater formula included in the meeting, but I guess there aren't too many high profile national series they could travel with. The racing was as good as you can expect from single seaters at this level and I'm sure some of them will probably end up in higher formulae some day (the programme hyped this up a bit by mentioning Formula Renault alumni Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Heikki Kovalainen), but it's not what I was expecting to see at a touring car meet.