Touring Cars the greatest era?

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Most of you are banging on about the Group A era - now I'm not old enough to have followed it, but I have seen a fair bit of 80's BTCC footage on TV - and it's my experience that the races were generally pretty dull. It was a bit too much on the amateur side for my taste, and the points system was just dumb. If you run multiple classes you should have them score seperatly, and if they do score overall, make sure they do so in the order they finish. Not have some little Vauxhall down in the pack take it.

The Super Touring era of the 1990's is by far my favourite one, but the 2001-2006 BTC years are also quite enjoying. I'm not too sure about the Super 2000 rules yet though...

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Magnusson

Most of you are banging on about the Group A era. I have seen a fair bit of 80's BTCC footage on TV - and it's my experience that the races were generally pretty dull. It was a bit too much on the amateur side for my taste, and the points system was just dumb. If you run multiple classes you should have them score seperatly, and if they do score overall, make sure they do so in the order they finish. Not have some little Vauxhall down in the pack take it.

The Super Touring era of the 1990's is by far my favourite one, but the 2001-2006 BTC years are also quite enjoying. I'm not too sure about the Super 2000 rules yet though...

You clearly haven't seen the right races. However I think that editing and stuff in those days maybe wasn't as bright as it is today so the footage provided perhaps doesn't paint the complete picture of how massively competitive Group A was both in sprint and long distance formats. Amateur it certainly wasn't - just less over the top commercialism than we get today which has spoiled all categories to be honest.

The class structure as far as i'm aware did give points to each class, so that the overall prize was equally as important to the guy in an Escort as it was to the overall race winner in a Rover or 635 or whatever. A manufacturer could run a car in each class theoretically to balance it's chances of the overall title out a bit.

The class mix up generally worked well in both modified and standard category saloon car racing. I think it gave lot more variety. The Australians used to think during the Group A era 'it ain't right if a small class car can compete for an overall race win' like we've ended up with in todays 2.0 stuff.

The only draw back was if one class was less competitive or dominated by a particular model of car, which ruined it in the last days as to win you either had to have a an RS500 (or in Aus the Skyline), an M3 in the middle class or a Corolla in the baby class. That wasn't supposed to happen and the regs could've been tightened up a bit to stop the turbo/homologation specials killing it off.

I actually think Group A would work a belter today. There plenty of hardware around for it or a similar set of regs to work. Manufacturers are more in favour of normally aspirated engines or turbo diesels as opposed to normally aspirated turbos. Therefore we'd get a good range of cars in each class.

[Frank de Jong]

Originally Posted by Marcus Mussa

I had the pleasure of taking part in one of those races, it was at Anderstorp in 1986.

Marcus, in http://homepage.mac.com/frank_de_jon...nderstorp.html
you are listed as "Mussa, I" in 22nd spot, 6th in class. I'll add your first name, is the nationality correct?

[racer69]

Originally Posted by Marcus Mussa

Since then I suppose the best series for me was the Group A series in the mid-80’s, as a lot of you seem to think.

I had the pleasure of taking part in one of those races, it was at Anderstorp in 1986. I “rented” a seat in a privately run Toyota Corolla (with Pierre Fermine, a Belgian owner/driver). I was supposed to be the third driver however I ended up driving alone with Fermine, which was fine by me! It was one of my best racing memories. There must have been 4 or 5 either current or ex-F1 drivers in the race, including one former World Champion (Denny Hulme!). I actually started the race next to Gerhardt Berger! Well the truth is we managed to qualify on the last row, and he was much further up the grid in his BMW. He was however unable to fire the car up and had to start from the last row.

Fermine did not have the right tyres; the race tyres he had brought along were too wide and we were not allowed to use them. We ended up having to do the full 3.5 hour race on one set of Michelin qualifiers! So I took it quite easy to save rubber. When Fermine took over at half distance he went much faster, but also came in after 10 laps complaining about the handling – the tyres were melting! We also had alternator problems and had to borrow the battery from my hire car (also a Toyota by chance).

It was a marvelous race to follow from such a grandstand seat – the leaders (TWR Rovers and semi-works Volvos) were a few seconds apart all race. They would blast past regularly. I left them lots of space – I was particularly wary of Tom Walkinshaw, but he was charming and always waved to thank me for moving over. I remember once I had Denny Hulme looming up behind me, I moved over to let him through before one of the corners, but he moved exactly the same way, so I moved the other way and of course he followed – it was getting a bit embarrassing, I should have just let him find his own way past, but it was rather impressive having that familiar two striped helmet sitting just behind my back window!

At the drivers’ briefing Walkinshaw played a bit of gamesmanship. The race took place just days after two terrible accidents, one was Elio de Angelis accident at Ricard and the other was Toivonen’s accident in Corsica. Walkinshaw circulated a petition calling for a ban on the very volatile fuel that was being used in racing at the time, in ETCC particular by the Volvo team. So he was using the fatalities to gain an advantage as naturally the Rovers did not need such high octane fuel. Anyway we all signed the petition. I remember lending my pen to Marc Surer, and ironically a few weeks later he was terribly badly burned in a rally accident. I think his navigator was killed. The Volvos ended up being disqualified from the results. We managed to finish the race, well back of course, but Fermine was quite pleased as I think it was the first race he had finished that year.

an outstanding read, fantastic

Originally Posted by Jimmy Magnusson

Most of you are banging on about the Group A era - now I'm not old enough to have followed it, but I have seen a fair bit of 80's BTCC footage on TV - and it's my experience that the races were generally pretty dull. It was a bit too much on the amateur side for my taste, and the points system was just dumb.

As chunterer said you haven't seen the right races. The cars moved around alot more, drove from the proper end, and related to the road going vehicles very closely, and was a truly world formula (something that although Super Touring crowed about, it never took over as much as Group A did).

Plus while the BTCC at times didn't really show the full potential of Group A, if you want some great Group A action get your hands on some of the ETCC and ATCC stuff that is out there.

And too much on the amateur side for you, Formula One from the same time looks amateurish compared to nowadays


Now i loved Group A, but prior to it's adoption in Australia we had a wonderful (but very very poorly policed and administrated) set of touring car rules called Group C (in Europe you had Group A touring cars and Group C sportscars, in Australia we had Group C Touring cars and Group A Sportscars!).

[chunder]

I dont think the mixed class era was generally consideerd to be that rgeat, I found it very hard toi be prasieworthy of say Chris Hodgetts winning a UK championship in a class where there were only a few cars, versus say Tim Hatvey against numerous simlar cars etc. Same as Europe really.

The late eighties were better with the two classes primarily.

But the early 2 litre years wer simply breathtaking for spectacle, manufacturer involvement and sheer excitement. Remember one year you had BMW, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Alfa Romeo, Volvo, Renault, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi and one or two others. Those days WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN in teh current economic climate.

OK some of those teams were better funded than otehrs, but you had a superb main series anb an equally superb private series,

The modern series is getting better now the cars are filtering through, but the cars are nothing like as nice to look at or watch.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Magnusson

Most of you are banging on about the Group A era - now I'm not old enough to have followed it, but I have seen a fair bit of 80's BTCC footage on TV - and it's my experience that the races were generally pretty dull. It was a bit too much on the amateur side for my taste, and the points system was just dumb. If you run multiple classes you should have them score seperatly, and if they do score overall, make sure they do so in the order they finish. Not have some little Vauxhall down in the pack take it.

The Super Touring era of the 1990's is by far my favourite one, but the 2001-2006 BTC years are also quite enjoying. I'm not too sure about the Super 2000 rules yet though...

Aha! That's where you're going wrong in my opinion, judging it by what you saw on TV. You should have seen the Group A cars live. Standing by the wall, watching a crowd of RS500's down the Craner Curves at Donington was an awesome sight. In fact, watching one on its own was impressive, a triumph of power over grip with driver bravery thrown in, far better that 'corner like a scalextric car, the only way to overtake is to barge your way past' Touring Cars nowadays is what I say. (But I am old...)

[Marcus Mussa]

Originally Posted by Frank de Jong

Marcus, in http://homepage.mac.com/frank_de_jon...nderstorp.html
you are listed as "Mussa, I" in 22nd spot, 6th in class. I'll add your first name, is the nationality correct?

Hi Frank

I had a French competition license in 1986 as I was also running in a French national championship (Coupe de l'Avenir) and you had to have a French license to get points. So really I should have been shown as French.

All the best
Marcus