TV alert

Not content with giving us the most hours of BTCC TV coverage per season ever, next week ITV4 will be showing the following:

British Touring Cars
Sunday 29th March on ITV 4 from 2:15pm to 3:15pm
Crashes and Smashes
A look at some of the biggest crashes from the past 15 years of the British Touring Car Championship, featuring interviews with Tim Harvey, Tom Chilton, Matt Jackson and Gordon Shedden

Media day - what to expect

There's been a surprising amount of announcements on Media Day Eve, leading some to suggest that there's a big surprise on the cards for Thursday,

What we've learned for sure today:

• Team Halfords is no more, as Team Dynamics will be running with a sleek black look
  
• Motorbase will be known as Airwaves BMW, which I'm sure Tim Harvey or Ben Edwards will misstate as "Airbase" at least once this season
  
• Hughes/KWR can't make it to the Media Day
  

What's highly likely

• Alan Morrison as the second Arena driver
  
• Pinkney to join Shedden at Dynamics
  
• Steve Rider to anchor ITV's coverage
  

Rumour rumour...

• One or two Astra Coupés to return run by a well-known Clio team featuring at an established Clio Cup front-runner
  
• Still some suggesting there's a "surprise" reveal scheduled...
  

New Motorbase title sponsor

Motorbase are expected to announce on Thursday that they have signed up Wrigley's Airwaves as a title sponsor for 2009. Airwaves have previously had a big presence in the two-wheeled world sponsoring the GSE Yamaha team in BSB last year, and currently sponsor the WRC coverage on Dave. The team is expected to be on the entry list as "Airwaves BMW".

CVRCWCZR Leon revealed

The wraps are off on the first Cartridge World Carbon Zero Racing car, and very smart it is too.

So who's the Arena sponsor? Answer...

As deduced previously, it's Aon. See the photos over at TCT.

So who's the Arena sponsor?

A week or so back a 10/10ths poster suggested AA would be the main sponsor for the Arena Focus project. Well, courtesy of Mike Hoyer's excellent photos over at Talk Photography Chilton did indeed sport an AA logo on his helmet at the first test the other day (photo 4); but that's most likely a hangover from the AA sponsorship of Dynamics last year. Plus that AA yellow would clash horrifically with Andyb's fantastic livery.

Photo 5, however, shows TCs racesuit; and the only logo (aside from Sparco and Arena) visible is..... Benfield, the insurance group previously part-owned by TC's dad Graeme Chilton. Benfield was sold to Aon, one of the world's biggest insurance brokers, in August last year netting Chilton Sr a cool £77m, and the resulting deal means he gets to be VC of Aon itself.