1998 British Touring Car Championship season

The 1998 Auto Trader RAC British Touring Car Championship was a prominent BTCC season during the 'golden era' of touring car racing in Britain. It was eventually won by Rickard Rydell in a Volvo S40 with a round to spare. The runner-up was Anthony Reid in a Nissan Primera. The Autosport Cup for Independents, a championship for privateer entries was won by Tommy Rustad in a Renault Laguna. The video game is based on this championship season.

There were three major rule changes to the championship prior to the start of the 1998 season. Race weekends were changed notably with two different types of races now elected: a "sprint" race and a, longer, "feature" race with two-tyre pit stops being mandatory in the latter. Qualifying for the sprint race involved drivers holding a "shoot-out" style session where each driver was sent out one of a time and were given a single timed lap to determine their starting position. Qualifying for the feature race remained the same as the previous season.

Four wheel drive systems were also banned for 1998, a system used notably by 1996 champions Audi. Audi continued to use their A4 platform for the 1998 season.

I think last year on some tracks we were not the quickest car but we ended up winning the championship because we made less mistakes than the other guys. So hopefully this year will be the same.

Following their success in 1997, the Williams backed Renault team, now in their third year as partnership in the BTCC, retained their driver line up of champion Alain Menu and Jason Plato. The same Laguna platform was also retained. The only change for the team saw them take away the yellow-blue livery for a new dark green livery as they changed. Nissan were another team to retain their driver line-up with the experience Scots David Leslie and Anthony Reid leading the Japanese manufacturers bid for the championship.

Following a very promising test programme with their Accord fastest in most of the winter testing, Honda replaced 1994 champion Gabriele Tarquini with GT Racer Peter Kox to race alongside James Thompson who was looking to build on his career best fifth overall in the previous seasons drivers' championship. Volvo had also changed their lineup with former Ferrari and Sauber driver Gianni Morbidelli replacing the experienced Kelvin Burt to partner Swede Rickard Rydell in this Volvos fifth season in the BTCC.

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