"It's my ninth title, but you never get bored of it and I want to win a tenth!" he said. "Every year is different though. SEAT won't be here but the BMWs are strong and so is the Honda, so we can't relax over the winter and need to work hard to keep improving our car.

"It was a very strange weekend and we couldn't have bet on the results at Brands Hatch. We thought we could score nine points easily as even on my worst weekend we scored something like 23 points. I was lucky that the SEAT wasn't as fast as it was before. If I look back now, scoring one point, I could have lost the championship with a 44 point lead!"

To see the full results of the BTCC Driver of the Year poll, CLICK HERE.