ITV Sport has confirmed that Steve Rider and Louise Goodman will continue to present its extensive coverage of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship in 2012.
Rider has been one of television’s most respected sports ‘anchormen’ since the Eighties while Goodman has, during the past 15 years, also become a hugely popular face among millions of viewers watching motor sport on TV in the UK.
Both will front the ITV4 channel’s mammoth live Sunday broadcasts from all ten of the BTCC’s race events in 2012 – these run from around 11.00am-6.00pm. Rider’s ITV BTCC work does not clash with his deal to provide features for Sky’s Formula 1 TV coverage. Meanwhile Goodman’s ITV role at BTCC events will extend to paddock, pit lane and grid interviews.
As announced recently ‘new signing’ Toby Moody will join former champion and expert pundit Tim Harvey in the commentary box, thereby completing ITV Sport’s BTCC presenting line-up.
Rider, a long-time fan of the BTCC and who helped the championship first secure regular mainstream TV coverage via the BBC’s flagship sports show Grandstand in the Eighties, is as excited as ever about the forthcoming season which begins at the world-famous Brands Hatch circuit in Kent on the weekend of 31 March- 1 April.
He commented: “The viewers not only have a wide variety of car to look forward to but also, in 2012, the increased spectacle that the latest Next Generation Touring Car regulations will bring with turbocharged engines and flaming exhausts. In some ways it’s taking an element of the iconic RS500 days with their turbos and performance in the early Nineties – an era which people still recall with great affection – and adding it to the modern-day BTCC with its many great different makes and models of car. I’m delighted that we have Toby on board and, given ITV’s incredibly strong commitment to the championship, this year’s BTCC is going to make for compelling viewing on television sets up and down the country.
“It’s also terrific that ITV remains a genuine alternative for people looking beyond Formula 1 for another form of highly professional and exciting motor sport in Britain. The network’s coverage of the BTCC is something of a perfect marriage between high street motoring and the high octane end of motor sport. The championship always comes with a great noise and fury and this will likely be even more so the case under the new regulations.”
Goodman added: “I always look forward to the start of the new BTCC season when we can start getting stuck into producing the shows – and, looking at the car and driver line-ups for 2012, this season promises to deliver all the drama, excitement and action that we’ve come to expect from the BTCC. It’ll be a pleasure working alongside Steve once more – he’s the ultimate professional – as it will the drivers, although one can never quite anticipate just what some of them might do on camera as I discovered last year! Having Toby on-board is also excellent news – he is a class act in the commentary booth and he and Tim will make for a great pairing.”
Tony Pastor, Head of Production for ITV Sport, said: “Steve, Louise, Toby and Tim surely make for one of TV’s most popular and professional presenting teams of any sport. That will prove invaluable in our coverage of the BTCC in 2012 bearing in mind that our live race day broadcasts contain close to seven hours of non-stop action for viewers.”
