New TOCA Junior series won’t run this year, gets revised plans for 2026

The new TOCA Junior championship will not be held in 2025 and instead it is intended to launch next year under a revised format where all cars are centrally run.

The category was set to begin this year and act as a replacement for Ginetta Junior at British Touring Car Championship events after the Yorkshire manufacturer decided to switch to the British GT package from 2023.

TOCA Junior was due to feature a new, bespoke rear-wheel-drive tin-top – christened the Chevron B1417 – but struggled to attract entries.

Despite a wealth of successful teams from across national motorsport attending the championship’s official launch last August, only two – Porsche/Mini squad Graves Motorsport and sportscar outfit Toro Verde – officially pledged support.

Organisers were therefore forced into a rethink amid the dearth of teams signing up and have opted to go down the route of taking the operation of all the cars in-house for 2026 in a bid to reduce costs.

“The parents I’ve spoken to all like this idea because they don’t have to negotiate with teams,” explained series director Dave Beecroft, who has experience of centrally-run categories having been an engineer in the SEAT Cupra Championship that supported the BTCC in the mid-2000s.

“You can’t chequebook it with doing lots of testing because we can control the testing – it massively reduces the costs.

“I think if we had gone down this route in the first place, we would’ve had a lot of interest. When you look at it from a cost point of view, it makes so much more sense.”

Despite the setback, Beecroft still believes the championship has the potential to be a success.

He said the decision to focus on 2026, instead of trying to revamp the offering for this year, enables another group of teenagers to be targeted.

“We’ve got a year to market and promote it to the karters,” added Beecroft.

The decision to postpone the championship’s launch leaves a sizeable hole in the BTCC schedules as TOCA Junior was due to appear at all 10 events.

In recent seasons, a variety of guest club series have enjoyed a slice of the TOCA limelight but, with calendars already locked in, BTCC boss Alan Gow has said there will not be major tweaks.

“It’s obviously too late to put in any replacements,” he said. “People aren’t going to change their calendars in February or March – it’s too late in everyone’s diary to do that.

“It just takes a bit of pressure off a raceday, and it doesn’t create a major problem because we have all our other great support races.”

When asked if there was the possibility of a one-off event added to the schedule later in the season, Gow added: “Perhaps. I’m always open to that.”

Established support series British Formula 4, Porsche Carrera Cup GB, Porsche Sprint Challenge GB and Mini Challenge will continue to run alongside the BTCC.