Back in ’92 when here in Australia we were watching Nissan GTR’s and Ford Sierra dominate our local touring car championships, i’d still look to the BTCC for some of the most competitive exciting racing i’d ever seen. This is a great little story by By Henry Hope-Frost, i found on www.motorsportretro.com and it really took me back to why I love the BTCC so much, its like cage wrestling in steroid injected daily drivers..!
The British Touring Car Championship has pitted high-street cars and household-name drivers against each other for over 50 years. And ever since those early years in the late 1950s, the emphasis has always been on door-banging, paint-trading and fender-bending.
Spectators flocked to all the major circuits of the UK – Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Donington and Oulton Park – to witness four-door fights between a range of modified versions of saloon cars they’d driven to the track that morning.
During the first three decades – the 60s, 70s and 80s – great champions were crowned, and hum-drum cars took on faster machines in a tyre-shredding class war that raged for lap after lap, weekend after weekend, season after season.
The BTCC’s fan popularity rocketed manufacturers flocked to take part – on that age-old, water-tight marketing philosophy of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ – and drivers from a range of disciplines continued to hold the series in high regard. Witness Formula 1 world champions Jack Brabham, Graham Hill and Jim Clark adding wins to their bulging CVs during the 1960s.
For the full story and an amazing clip of the closing laps of the ’92 Championship deciding race, visit our friend @ motorsportretro.com
