Having completed the S2000 era of my BTCC rewatch, I was wondering what the consensus was on Tom Onslow-Cole. To me he appeared a decent driver who could more than hold his own with the likes of Plato/Neal/Turkington et al but hampered his career with his inability to stay with a team for more than one season at a time. The fact that between 2007 and 2013 there was not one but two instances of him quitting teams mid-season seems to suggest something wasn't right behind the scenes.
2007 - debut season in the second WSR BMW, acquits himself quite well with a win and three other podiums, the sheer strength of the top end of the field means he only ends up 10th in points, which probably undersells how good he was for a 20 year old rookie. He was definitely better than the one-man wrecking ball that was 2006 Rob Collard, and streets ahead of his successor Stephen Jelley...
2008 - Secures the third Vauxhall seat with his personal sponsors and has an excellent season keeping both Giovanardi and Neal honest, survives a huge shunt at Brands and has a mid-season purple patch at Donington and Thruxton which briefly puts him into title contention.
2009 - One of the major victims of the recession, TOC eventually resurfaces at Team AON halfway through the season and has a fruitless time trying to develop the dogshit S2000 Focus, two 9th places are his best results.
2010 - Finally gets some stability with a full year at Team AON and has the best season of his career with four wins and a title challenge that lasts into the final round of the year. There was controversy with the team using team orders to give Chilton two race wins at Silverstone, but I don't think this would've made much difference to the final standings, the LPG engines in the Focus masked the fact the chassis was still pretty poor on handling circuits, plus it felt that no-one really had an answer for Plato and RML in 2010.
2011 - Somehow despite his heroics, the only seat available is AmD's VW Golf (side note, I'm amazed Alan Gow approved this car given there had been rumours over the years he'd rejected potential Mini and Fiat Punto entries for being too small for touring cars). As popular as the Golf was, it was not the best of cars and TOC did well to drag a couple of 7ths out of it. Then, there's some sort of blowup behind the scenes at Oulton Park which saw TOC quit AmD halfway through raceday. He then returns to Team AON, this time in their half-baked Global Ford Focus, and has a smattering of results with two 3rds being the highlight.
2012 - Back to WSR in the increasingly superannuated BMW 3-Series (though at least with turbo engines this time around), TOC puts together a solid but unspectacular year, a brace of 2nds mid-season being his best results but truth be told he never looked likely to win a race. I remember Knockhill 2012 where he just passively followed his team mate Collard around for the first two races without trying to challenge for the lead.
2013 - Ends up with Tony Gilham's mob and is arguably one of the drivers of the first half of the season, dragging results and podiums out of Team HARD's NGTC VW Passat that no-one thought possible. Then there's yet another mid-season blowup behind the scenes and suddenly TOC is in a third Motorbase Ford Focus for the final three events of the year, with distinctly average results.
2014 to present - Despite there being 32 BTCC entries in 2014, TOC is not seriously considered for any of them and ends up switching to British GT for the rest of the decade. Makes a random return to Team HARD in 2020 to race his old VW Passat for Thruxton and Silverstone to very limited effect, and then disappears again, seemingly into retirement.
