The BTCC finale for 2010 at Brands Hatch had a lot of promise - no less than four drivers with a chance of scooping the title and a last minute surprise of The Stig, aka Ben Collins, driving as well.

We had the scoop on Ben's drive from our visit to Airwaves BMW's HQ about 10 days before the event but restrictions on the use of this info prevented us from breaking the story - such is the nature of a lot of the knowledge we gain from the inside of motorsport.

The "scoop" was obtained while talking to David Bartrum ahead of the interview (see the previous blog entry) when he let slip that he had nine cars and not eight (two touring cars and six Porsches) and we joked that maybe he had The Stig driving the third touring car... to which he said yes, indeed The Stig! But don't tell anyone yet...

Together with a lot of interest in the race, the weather also promised to deliver. For outdoor reportage photography weather is a key point. As it turned out Saturday was wreathed in low cloud (Brands is relatively high altitude for the UK and almost has its own local weather system!) and you will see from our images how that compared to Sunday's glorious autumn sunshine. You simply cannot control the weather, yet it can turn a flat and boring photograph into something very special. I suppose global warming is something that can be a boon to photographers and event organisers - Brands off the back off a good weather forecast sold more advanced tickets than BTCC ever had.

As for the racing, well you can have all the factors that bode well for an epic clash but you cannot control the actual events themselves. The ramdomness of mechanical failure and someone just having a good day can disrupt the best laid plans of mice and men.

Plato's dominance that weekend was clear on the Saturday. Despite going into that round with maximum success balast he was clearly in a class of his own for qualifying on the Saturday, he was visibly faster than the rest.

He did what he had to do but the early championship win was a little flat compared to the 2009 clash that drove Turkington to the final lap for the title.

Maybe the dissapointment was comparing it to that moment - to be honest that 2009 finale was the most electric event BLZEEBUB have ever covered. It was very special and I think we were a little over optimistic to expect 2010 to be the same.

Thats pretty much it for 2010, BTCC is over, BSB is over, now we are left with a couple of "night" races to deal with. From a photography point of view these offer the biggest challenges. Not only are they technically difficult to get quality images but we also normally only get one or two chances per year to get it right. This is a period of hard lessons learnt... keep watching and you shall see how we do!

Andy K