And now here is more... I pretty much agree with the majority of this list and despite not arriving on the BTCC scene until 1998 it is good to see Yvan Muller recognised highly on this list
The top 25 drivers in Super Touring There were lots of great drivers in the 1990s tin-tops heyday, but who was best? AUTOSPORT asked those who should know
Who was the best driver of the highly competitive Super Touring era?
The arguments raged in AUTOSPORT's office so we decided to ask the drivers themselves. Who better to judge the best than the aces who banged door handles?
We called as many drivers as we could who had appeared in a relevant series for at least one season to give us their top five opponents. The only rule was that they weren't allowed to vote for themselves!
Over 60 drivers answered and we then totted up the scores - five points for a first, down to one for fifth - to come up with this list.
Since AUTOSPORT magazine closed for press, we received a few more votes from drivers and they have been included here for the final order.
Of course, with many of the respondents being European-based there is a bias. Australian, American and Japanese votes were few and far between so such stars as Brad Jones, David Donohue and Masanori Sekiya missed out, and there were plenty of others who didn't make it. No Emanuele Naspetti (Italian champion), Mike Briggs (South African title winner), Jan Nilsson (double Swedish champion) or the prolific Roberto Colciago.
Nevertheless, we reckon it's a pretty good list. Let us know what you think the drivers got wrong by emailing us at
mail@autosport.com.
=24. Tim Harvey
British champion (1992)
Once his single-seater career was smashed along with his ankles in a nasty Formula Ford shunt, switching to the BTCC was the best career move Harvey could have made.
He proved an irresistible force with Vic Lee in 1992, thanks to a little help from BMW and Steve Soper, and then switched to the new Renault team and its rally-based 19 - just the ticket in the sodden European Grand Prix support race in '93!
After moving on to Volvo, where he'd score a couple of wins just as he'd done with Renault, he admirably fought a losing battle with Peugeot's British-spec 406 for three seasons.
=24. Ingo Hoffmann
Five-time South American Super Touring race-winner
Still one of the most popular racing drivers in Brazil several years after retiring, ex-Formula 1 backmarker Hoffmann is the most successful driver in tin-top history in his homeland, having won the V8 Stock Car crown 12 times.
After a few forays back to Europe to race Super Touring machinery in the Spa and Nurburgring 24-hour races, he was a logical choice by BMW to join its Team Proas line-up once the category got a foothold in South America.
Hoffmann dutifully helped team-mate Oscar Larrauri to the '98 crown, then repeated his own third place in the championship the following year by finishing in the top five in every race and only missing the title by six points.
In total he scored five Super Touring wins before heading back to V8s.
=24. Emiliano Spataro
South American co-champion (1999)
Spataro packed up and headed back to his native Argentina towards the end of 1997, his attempt at a single-seater career in Europe having run out of steam after a race-winning Italian Formula 3 campaign and a season in Formula 3000 with Coloni that featured almost as many non-qualifications as it did race finishes.
Instantly adapting his driving to a rear-wheel-drive BMW in the final few South American Super Touring rounds of that season, he then raced Alfa Romeo and Peugeot machinery in the next two seasons respectively.
Race wins in both years and a share of the 1999 title alongside team-mate Caca Bueno followed before a switch to TC2000 (and later, its successor, Super TC2000), in his homeland, in which he has been a regular race winner ever since.
=21. Caca Bueno
South American co-champion (1999)
Best-known for winning Brazil's uber-popular Stock Car V8 title five times during the past seven years, Carlos Eduardo dos Santos Galvao Bueno Filho, or 'Caca' as he's almost ubiquitously known in South America, began his tin-top exploits in the 1990s and played a major role in the most dramatic of the continental Super Touring series that ran from 1997-2000.
He and Peugeot team-mate Spataro fought out a titanic battle for the title in '98 and eventually were given joint-champion status after organisers were unable to separate the pair on points, results down to seventh place, or pole positions.
=21. Tom Kristensen
Japanese runner-up (1994)
Away from his sportscar glories, the versatile Kristensen proved to be a handy touring car pilot.
As the Japanese series shifted from Group A to Super Touring (he was primarily there racing F3000) TK finished just a point behind local hero Masanori Sekiya in 1994 in his Toyota Corona before moving back to Europe to follow his single-seater dream.
When that was snuffed out, Kristensen fell back on a drive for Honda in the German STW Cup. After a lacklustre inaugural campaign in '98, he finished third in its final season in '99, winning three rounds.
He shifted to Britain for 2000, but was never comfortable with the series' rumbustious nature. He won three races, including a clean sweep at the final round at Silverstone - the last-ever in BTCC Super Touring history.
=21. Anthony Reid
British runner-up (1998 and 2000)
This oil-rig-worker-turned-racing pro began his Super Touring odyssey in Japan, scoring eight victories in its premier tin-top series, and twice finishing fourth in the championship in a HKS-run Vauxhall Cavalier.
He switched to Germany and Nissan in 1996, and although he only netted a couple of podiums there he did win the Japanese series finale at Fuji.
By '97 he had joined the British ranks, racing for RML's Nissan programme, which led to a title near miss in '98 that included seven victories. He fell short of toppling Volvo's Rickard Rydell, but at least had the satisfaction of almost wrestling him during a parc ferme bust-up at Brands.
Despite being announced mid-'98 as continuihg with Nissan, Reid defected to Ford in a big-money deal - opening the door for Laurent Aiello to drive his car to title glory the following year. With Ford, he would finish second again in 2000 after a final round disaster at Silverstone.
=18. Nicola Larini
FIA Touring Car World Cup runner-up; European runner-up
There were to be no major Super Touring titles for Nicola Larini over the course of a long and illustrious tin-top career, but there might have been had the Italian not been busy in Germany starring in something called the DTM in the mid-1990s.
His performance in the FIA Touring Car World Cup at Monza in 1993 proved what this long-time Alfa Romeo driver was capable of aboard a front-drive machine. Larini finished second, with a second and a third behind runaway winner Paul Radisich. That was impressive given what he'd been racing all year: he had to step down from a four-wheel-drive DTM car with in excess of 100bhp more than a Super Tourer.
Larini's Super Touring career didn't begin in earnest until after the demise of the DTM and its ITC successor, not to mention a brief return to F1. His problem after that was that he was paired throughout with one of the all-time tin-top greats in Fabrizio Giovanardi.
There were race wins, of course, but his team-mate was the one who always took the end-of-season silverware.
=18. David Leslie
British runner-up (1999) & nine-time race winner
The Scot arrived a year late to the tin-top party - his first full-time BTCC ride was not until 1992, in the RML-run Ecurie Ecosse Vauxhall team.
It is a well-known fact that Leslie's development skills and teamwork contributed hugely to RML's progress in the touring car world. But he could also be blisteringly fast on his day, as he proved when he moved 'away' to the MSD-run Hondas, and then back home with RML in the Nissan era.
Jo Winkelhock, for one, was a driver who rated Leslie: "I had great respect for him and he was a fighter on the track."
Leslie arguably fell short on political skills when the BTCC was at its biggest level in a corporate sense - a characteristic that some could call naive - but such manoeuvring just wasn't his way.
After Leslie's death, John Cleland summed up: "He was the sort of guy who did the job but didn't talk about it. He was never noisy. He wasn't a qualified engineer, but as an engineer his quality was without question."
=18. Andy Rouse
Five-time BTCC Super Touring race winner
This engineering genius's finest driving days were behind him when Super Touring (of which he was a founding father) arrived. But that didn't stop him being a major player in its early years.
Running works Toyotas, the team owner/driver won three races on his way to third in 1991. Joined by Will Hoy for '92 (quite literally in the Westfield barriers in a notable Brands faux pas), Rouse won two races to finish fifth in points.
In 1993 Rouse rejoined forces with Ford, with whom he'd won the last of his four overall titles in 1985. But the Mondeo programme was delayed after an aborted rear-wheel drive flirtation, and although team-mate Paul Radisich would win three races and the FIA World Cup at Monza, Rouse's second place in the Silverstone finale was his highpoint.
A poor run in '94 convinced Rouse to hang up his helmet, but to judge him on his Super Touring record is to underestimate a tin-top virtuoso, a quite unique talent who scored 60 overall BTCC wins in 21 years.
17. Oscar Larrauri
South American champion (1997-98, 2000)
Juan Manuel Fangio's protege was well-travelled by the time he made his Super Touring debut with Alfa Romeo in the 1995 Italian championship, having accrued European titles in F3 and Renault Alpines, a string of high-level sportscar race wins and a spell in Formula 1 with Eurobrun that was as forgettable as it was short-lived.
That year racing a 155 to 10th in the Superturismo standings, however, planted the seed for an incredible run of success for a man already 41 years old.
A deal to race a Proas BMW for Hugo Amadeo Videla in '97 led 'Poppy' to nine wins and back-to-back South American titles, while a return to Alfa Romeo machinery - with the Quadrifoglio team - netted him a third crown in the championship's swansong year in 2000.
16. James Thompson
12-time BTCC Super Touring race winner
The poster boy of the BTCC's Super Touring era, Thompson entered the arena as a fresh-faced 19-year-old independent. His pace in a Peugeot 405 earned him a works Vauxhall deal for 1995, replacing Jeff Allam alongside John Cleland, and it only took until the third round at Thruxton to become the BTCC's youngest race winner at the time.
A horrendous testing crash at Knockhill curtailed that season, and after a difficult '96 in the recalcitrant Vectra, he switched to Honda, finishing fifth in '97, third in '98 and fourth in '99.
His 2000 season was blighted by intra-Honda politics and the distraction of racing in the DTM for Abt-Audi, although he still took his 12th BTCC win at Silverstone that season.
Thommo was also a podium finisher twice in his last Super Touring hurrah in the European series in '01, unsuccessfully attempting to help his pal Gabriele Tarquini to the title.
=14. Johnny Cecotto
Two-time German champion (1994 & 1998)
One of BMW's guilt-edged roster of touring car superstars, this former 500cc motorbike racer found sanctuary in tin-tops after his Formula 1 career was ended by severe leg injuries sustained in qualifying for the 1984 British Grand Prix, when he was Ayrton Senna's Toleman team-mate.
Having formed part of its 'old DTM' nobility, Cecotto led BMW's line-up when it joined the new-for-'94 German STW Cup. The Venezuelan delivered the championship for the Munich marque in his first season, winning the last three rounds to defeat Audi's Frank Biela in his 318i, and did it again four years later.
He didn't defend his title in '95, however, being shifted to BMW's BTCC attack alongside David Brabham (whom he outscored by a point). It was a lacklustre campaign, however, with fourth at Knockhill his best result. He saved face with runner-up spot in his only Italian Supertourismo campaign a year later, finishing just six points shy of Audi's champion Dindo Capello.
Cecotto also returned to Germany for the last three rounds in '96, then finished third in '97 behind Laurent Aiello and Jo Winkelhock before scoring his second German crown in '98 - beating Aiello by three points - which preceded BMW's Super Touring denouement.
=14. Emanuele Pirro
Two-time Italian (1994-95) and German (1996) champion
Pirro's successes in touring cars are easy to overlook given what he went on to achieve in sportscars when his employer switched codes. The five-time winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours notched up a string of titles aboard Audi Super Tourers.
Already an established touring car pedaller with BMW in the 1980s before he belatedly broke through into Formula 1, he returned to tin-tops full-time with the Munich marque after his single-seater career faltered.
A switch to Audi produced immediate results: he won back to back titles in Italian Superturismo in 1994-95 and then topped those successes by claiming the STW crown in Germany in '96.
Pirro at his peak was sublime at the wheel of a touring car, Super or otherwise. He dominated in Italy, taking 17 wins over two seasons, and was equally dominant in Germany, taking the title with nine victories.
13. Jason Plato
Six-time BTCC Super Touring winner
He got his chance with Renault on the back of his all-conquering season in the Spider Cup in 1996, and was erroneously perceived as being Renault UK's boy in the team. But in reality Plato's presence in the squad was decided by Frank Williams and Patrick Head and his contract was with them, not the car manufacturer.
Pole position for his first three BTCC races unrealistically raised expectations, and it was perhaps not until 1998 – his second season and a considerably less successful one for Renault – that he established himself as someone who without doubt would be a classy tin-top campaigner in the long run.
Wins in 1999, with what was by some way the least-competitive Laguna built by Williams, and in 2000, with the tricky Vauxhall Vectra, showed that Plato was much more than just a one-lap specialist who lucked into the best car for his rookie season.
As he explains: "Over time you get an automatic alarm in your system to alert you when you're going off the rails, and that makes you perform better. That's why good touring car drivers perform year in, year out. It's like a muscle memory, a sixth sense."
12. Roberto Ravaglia
Italian champion (1993)
Ravaglia remains the ultimate collector of major touring car crowns to this day (his successes were surely more worthy than Fabrizio Giovanardi's) and that gives him a decent shout for the title of the greatest ever tin-top driver. But he doesn't command a place in our Super Touring top 10 — and quite rightly so.
Ravaglia's run of seven championship wins ground to a halt after a solo Super Touring triumph at home in Italy in 1993 with the CiBiEmme BMW squad.
Subsequent campaigns in more rarefied company in the STW in Germany and then the British Touring Car Championship yielded only a single win. He couldn't be considered a frontrunner in either, though he did notch up a second Spa 24 Hours victory with Bigazzi in 1994.
The truth is that Ravaglia's best days were behind him when the Super Touring era started. The talents that had made him a World Touring Car champion in 1987 and title winner in the DTM two years later were on the wane and, after BMW took him sportscar racing in the FIA GT Championship in 1997, illness forced him to call a premature end to his driving career.
Q&A with Gabriele Rafanelli
Team Bigazzi boss
How good was Roberto Ravaglia as a touring car driver?
There is no doubt that he is the best there ever was in touring cars. Just look at all the championships he won.
What about as a Super Touring car driver?
That's harder to assess. It was pretty tough in those times and there were lots of pretty good, younger drivers coming up. When he was racing for us in the STW, he was no longer the main man at BMW. And don't forget we were racing against Audi. Had Roberto lost his edge by then? I don't know.
Is there an argument that he was better suited to the endurance format of touring car racing in the late 1980s rather than sprint racing?
I don't think so. He was a great endurance driver, but I think he was even better as a sprint driver. Look at what he did in the DTM in 1989.
11. Paul Radisich
Two time FIA World Cup (1993-94) winner
Best known as winner of two of the three runnings of the Super Touring World Cup, which pooled most of the top stars from the category worldwide, the New Zealander was something of an overnight sensation.
A mid-1980s stint in British Formula 3, where he partnered Damon Hill, was followed by a move to race in the States and back Down Under, but he soon made his mark when he was called up to race the Ford Mondeo in 1993.
The late green-light and team chief Andy Rouse's determination to get the car absolutely right – he even developed, and shelved, a rear-wheel-drive version – meant a late season start and in hindsight this probably cost Radisich his best shot at a BTCC title.
Once the V6 Ford hit the track, Radisich outscored everyone in 1993, with 110 points to the 77 of champion Jo Winkelhock. He was a favourite for '94, only for Alfa's homologation special to move the goalposts.
"I still came out and finished third [in '93]," he says, "and if we'd done the whole season... But ifs and buts don't count."
Ford's disastrous season with the Reynard-built car in '96 meant a regroup for new works team West Surrey Racing in '97, and Radisich's move to Peugeot for '98 failed to bear much fruit either. But he remained a hard battler throughout the era.
Q&A
You were quite off the radar in British circles before your Ford deal...
Andy Rouse joined me, Peter Brock and Brad Jones at Sandown and Bathurst one year and I struck up a relationship with him. Alan Gow was running Peter's team and then went to work for Andy. I was cheap in those days so Andy thought, 'Let's give him a shot!' when he started the Mondeo project.
What's your favourite memory?
Winning the 1993 World Cup at Monza at the time was unbelievable, especially as New Zealand couldn't get an entry until late on. To go there and dominate was the highlight of my career. Winning it again at Donington in '94 was more of a surprise. The Mondeo was heavy at the front and would chew tyres, but Michelin came up with carbonfibre-sidewalled tyres and I quietly worked out what would suit me best.
You had some years in uncompetitive cars, but was it a buzz just to be part of it?
I'd pinch myself every time I got a contract. F1 was very quiet at the time and then all of a sudden 25 lunatics would get to a track and capture the imagination of the public around the world.
10. Frank Biela
French (1993), British (1996) champion and World Cup (1995) winner
Audi's tin-top goliath was already a DTM champion when Ingolstadt switched its attentions to the two-litre genre. As Audi withdrew from the DTM, Biela was seconded to France. He won the '93 Supertourisme title in a ROC-run Audi 80 quattro, with five wins to BMW rival Laurent Aiello's four – becoming the only non-Frenchman ever to win this title.
He returned to Germany for '94, finishing runner-up to BMW's Johnny Cecotto, and then placed third in '95. His season was marred by the accident that claimed Kieth O'dor at Avus, but ended on a high note with victory in the final FIA World Cup at Paul Ricard.
Biela's true two-litre highpoint came in 1996, when he spearheaded Audi's inaugural BTCC campaign and dominated the series at his first attempt. Eight victories was a herculean effort – and capped off by Macau Guia glory. He then finished runner-up in the '97 BTCC, despite a severe weight penalty levied at his four-wheel-drive machine during the first half of the season.
After returning home, his Super Touring career ended with a whimper in '98, as the two-wheel-drive A4 was abject compared to its previous total-traction potency. Biela left the discipline to taste sportscar glory.
9. Fabrizio Giovanardi
Italian (1998-99), Spanish (1997) and European (2000-01) champion
If big numbers are your only barometers of success, then Fabrizio Giovanardi was the driver of the Super Touring era. Five titles spread across the Spanish, Italian and European series certainly back up the Italian's claim.
Committed and stylish inside the car and quick with a one-liner to take the sting out of an opponent's grumblings out of it, Giovanardi was a joy to behold whenever a paddock was graced with his presence – and "a real racer's racer" in the words of his future BTCC team boss Ian Harrison.
For all his qualities behind the wheel, he never beat a truly world-class field during the Super Touring era; his 2001 European Cup being the most hard-fought against Alfa Romeo team-mate Nicola Larini and Honda's Gabriele Tarquini.
It is arguable, however, by the way he took apart Larini, Rickard Rydell, Jorg Muller and others once the series morphed into the S2000-spec ETCC in '02, that he could have raised the stakes had he been pitted against better opposition.
8. Jo Winkelhock
British (1993), Asia-Pacific (1994) and German (1995) champion
Joachim Winkelhock was already a race winner in the DTM when Schnitzer Motorsport was dropped into the BTCC in 1993 in the wake of BMW's withdrawal from the German series.
'Smokin' Jo', as he became known on account of his fondness for nicotine, was an instant hit, beating team-mate Steve Soper to the British title in his maiden year in the series and going on to win 27 times in Super Touring (13 of them coming in the BTCC) until BMW placed him in its Le Mans programme.
The rear-wheel-drive properties of the BMW suited him perfectly and with it he took the Asia-Pacific crown in '94 and the German STW a year later.
He was back in Britain in '96 with Roberto Ravaglia as his new team-mate. The wins did not dry up as he finished fifth in the points and produced arguably his most memorable drive in the category at Snetterton.
After wrenching a muscle in his right arm during a pole-position lap, Winkelhock lost the lead in race one when he ran wide early on. He then fought his way back to the front only to chuck his car off again three laps from home. Never a dull moment...
Q&A
Charly Lamm
Schnitzer Motorsport team boss
How did Winkelhock and Soper work together?
Steve was six years older and helped the whole team and Jo get up to speed very well in the BTCC in 1993. Of course, Jo won the championship, but he then did a very professional job when he was asked to support Steve in the Japanese championship in '95.
Did he have any quirks?
He needed to be at home in Swabia to recharge his batteries, and he never wasted any time in getting there. If we had a BTCC race on the Sunday and a TOCA test on Tuesday, he'd get the last flight to Stuttgart and then come back to England on Monday night to be ready for the test the next morning. It seemed pretty strange, but we accepted it and so did BMW.
How bad was his smoking habit?
He smoked more than Alan Gow – who was a big smoker back then. He said he needed the cigarettes to relieve the tension he felt. He even smoked on the grid – we got a few tellings-off for that!
7. John Cleland
British champion (1995)
A throwback to a bygone era, this Peebles car dealer shrugged off the reputations of top-class pros by proving a mighty competitor to beat. He might have traded Volvos in the week, but at the weekend he was Vauxhall's tin-top titan.
Having made his name club racing his way through prodsaloons and Thundersaloons (the latter in a mighty Vauxhall Carlton), he was a pre-Super Touring overall BTCC champion in 1989 in the diminutive 1.6-litre Astra. But he would truly prove his salt in two-litre Cavaliers.
Always a factor in the early '90s, his controversial denial of the '92 crown in the final round by BMW's brazen Steve Soper proved to be the series' pivotal moment in the public psyche.
Although steamrollered by the might of BMW and Alfa in subsequent years (along with everyone else) his finest hour came in 1995, when RML provided him with a Cavalier capable of winning the title. A mid-season purple patch of four consecutive victories at Brands, Donington (where he particularly excelled) and Silverstone allowed him to defeat some of the biggest names in the business.
The unloved Vectra followed, in which he'd only score another two race wins over four seasons, before his retirement in 1999.
6. Gabriele Tarquini
British champion (1994)
When Tarquini arrived in the BTCC in 1994 with Alfa Corse – complete with mechanics in 1960s-style overalls – it brought charisma and flair to a series accustomed to old-school tin-top hard men who seemed to have been around since the days of Escort BDAs.
With his permanent smile he soon became a firm favourite with fans and media, who today still caricature his mispronunciations on pondering the form of 'Wimblydon' FC (he is a big football fan), talking about the old Australian GP venue of 'Ade-lie-day' or his favourite Brands Hatch corner of 'Dingadonga Dell'.
Tarquini dominated in '94 and then returned – after a spell in the ITC – in 1997 as part of Honda's new tie-up with Prodrive. He spent five years in the Accords, but while always quick could never win another title in BTCC, German Super Touring or the European Super Touring Championship.
Perhaps the biggest shame was the 2000 BTCC, where he probably suffered the most from internal politics within the Honda camp. But he should be credited with taking a young James Thompson under his wing and allowing the Englishman an insight into continental ways that served him well with both Alfa and SEAT.
Tarquini remains a great team player in the WTCC and today, as then, is capable of exquisite performances on his day. But back in Super Touring times the racecraft could sometimes be ragged and the ensuing incident would often be prefaced with another favourite Tarquini stock phrase: "I go large [wide]..."
Certainly one of the greats of Super Touring, but on UK shores his accomplishments are often coloured by the fact that Alfa had stolen such a march on aero homologation in his title season.
5. Rickard Rydell
British champion (1998)
His very presence in the Super Touring ranks was almost an accident, and Rydell was very much viewed as the new boy when he joined Jan Lammers at Volvo's BTCC team in 1994. But a year later he was most definitely the marque's top dog, and would dominate a string of highly rated team-mates in the TWR-run Swedish machines.
"I was racing in Japan in Formula 3 and had an offer to move to F3000, which in those days Mika Salo, Eddie Irvine and Heinz-Harald Frentzen used as a step to F1," says Rydell.
"That was my ambition, but I had a lung collapse at the end of 1993 [a congenital condition brought on by stress and long-distance travel] and was in hospital for a week. The offer came from Volvo and it was easier to commute back and forward to England.
"If not for the collapsed lung I probably would not have made that decision, but in hindsight I haven't regretted it at all. It enabled me to have 20 consecutive years as a factory driver [from signing with Toyota in 1990]."
Over six years with Volvo and one with Ford, Rydell established himself as one of the very best in the BTCC.
If anything his style made him the Jim Clark of this tin-top era – super-smooth, deceptively quick and consistent, but lacking some of his rivals' ruthlessness in battle.
At the time, it was always very hard to separate him from Alain Menu, who had deeper troughs but perhaps had more of the kind of moments of inspired brilliance that are remembered for years afterwards.
"A hard competitor and blindingly fast in qualifying," says John Cleland of Rydell, "but I used to get inside his head before a race and during a game of golf. A really nice guy and good fun to be with."
Q&A
Was your initial signing to Volvo something to do with you being Swedish?
No, it was up to TWR [works team], and I went from thinking I was on the verge of F1 to racing an estate car!
What was your Super Touring highlight?
As a driver, winning Bathurst in 1998. It's the number one circuit on my list, my pole lap was 1.5 seconds quicker than anyone else, and to drive with Jim Richards was really nice. The Nissan was pushing us almost the whole race. As well as that, winning the BTCC at Silverstone was special.
Do you feel you could have had another title?
In 1995, if we'd had the same tyres as the others... The Dunlops were really good for one lap, which helped me take so many poles, but not the tyres to have in the race. In 1999, we'd developed the engine so we were faster, and I was leading three times when I had mechanical failures. Even in 2000, in the Prodrive Ford, I had to make the transition to a car without powersteering and had a theoretical chance of the title at the last round when they had to pull the car off the grid.
4. Steve Soper
Japanese champion (1995) and Macau Guia winner (1997)
Transit. Trailer. Treadmill: Brands, Oulton, Snet. One-make series hero: Minis, Fiestas, Met(ros). It took Steve Soper several seasons of slog – and gallons of petrol, paint and sweat – to become an overnight sensation.
He was 32 when he burst onto the BTCC scene in a TWR-run Rover Vitesse and secured the title (1983) at his first attempt in a RWD big fish rather than FWD tiddler. That honour was belatedly stripped from him because his car was discovered to have adjustable swizzle joints or some such gizmo no-no, but it was obvious that he was the best: fast and smooth out front, aggressive and perspicacious in the pack.
He could with equal facility finesse an over-boosting turbo Sierra Cossie on undersized tyres or kerb-hop a buzzing atmo Beemer on the cam.
His talent demanded a wider stage and the WTCC, ETCC and DTM provided it. As such, he became a grudging participant whenever marketing demands dragged him back to Blighty.
He played the badass hired gun brilliantly, however, often charging through the pack as though the others had left their handbrakes on. His clash with John Cleland at Silverstone 1992 was ugly but the mainstream publicity it generated put thousands on the gates and hundreds of thousands on the viewing figures.
He never did win the BTCC – Schnitzer team-mate 'Smokin' Jo' Winkelhock did a number on him in 1993 – but then Stirling Moss never did become world champion.
Be clear: 'Soperman' was the benchmark. If you could cling to his cape you knew you wouldn't be far from the sharp end. And if he loomed in your mirrors you knew it was time to vacate the phone box or tighten your underpants.
3. Yvan Muller
French champion (1995)
It's fitting that Yvan Muller can be described as an Alsation (he hails from the French region of Alsace) as if you wanted someone who could hustle a dog of a Super Tourer, then Yvan was your man!
Much like fellow countryman Laurent Aiello a few years earlier, Muller's single-seater career ground to a halt at F3000 level, despite winning the British Formula 2 title in '92, and his salvation was Hugues de Chaunac's ORECA BMW squad.
In 1994, however, the BMW 318i wasn't the force it had been previously due to a draconian weight penalty – but the advent of a mid-summer homologation package, including front splitter, rear wing and a weight break, turned him into a winner in the second half of the season.
He got to within 11 points of leader Aiello at one point, but failed to make any further inroads into the Peugeot team leader and finished third in the title race.
This proved the springboard to a successful French title assault with ORECA in '95, which led to a works deal with the factory Audi squad ROC Auto. After a total-traction learning year in Italy in '96, Muller would develop its front-wheel-drive A4, first in the German STW Cup in '97 and then moved to Britain a year later.
The A4's aero package was unsuited to the twisty British tracks, and not only was the car an oversteering bronco, it also suffered from poor weight balance due to its longitudinal four-pot motor. But Muller's committed driving style that season earned him plaudits from observers and brickbats from rivals, who felt he was over-aggressive in battle.
"The whole ambience of this series is very different from Germany," he said at the time. "I have the feeling that, in England, if you have a big mouth and talk a lot and complain, then you're automatically right. That, for me, is a bit stupid."
Vauxhall, which was struggling with its Triple Eight Vectra programme, made him its marquee signing for 1999, dispensing with (team co-founder) Derek Warwick's services. Muller made an almost-immediate impact with a sensational victory at Brands Hatch, passing a warring Aiello and Anthony Reid in one fantastic lunge at Paddock Hill Bend.
In 2000, he finished best of the non-Fords, which dominated the season, in fourth position. He scored a brace of victories at Thruxton and another at Silverstone.
After the Super Touring era, he would go on to claim the 2003 British title and three (soon to be four) world championships.
Q&A with Ian Harrison
Triple Eight team boss
What is your main memory of Yvan in Super Touring?
We were very lucky. We had some of the best guys. If you look at Muller, Plato, Thompson, Giovanardi, you couldn't put fag paper between those guys. Yvan was probably the joint best driver we've ever had, with Giovanardi.
Where was Yvan strong? What were his great strengths?
He was a great racer and his car control – he used to drive looking out through the side window most of the time and made it work. He was a great team guy. We had good fun with him and it was a shame when he left.
Yvan made his name driving cars that weren't necessarily the best so what do you think were the best Super Touring cars?
The Renault Laguna was a good bit of kit, but the Nissan Primera was pretty bloody special. And the four-wheel-drive Audi was a great car. They were all great, but they were completely over-the-top, ridiculous, bits of kit. I don't miss them at all! It used to take three months to put them together and it just wasn't necessary.
2. Laurent Aiello
French (1994), German (1997) & British (1999) champion
The only man to claim Super Touring titles in France, Germany and Britain – before adding the DTM crown to his CV – the rise of Super Touring coincided with Aiello's single-seater career terminating after two disastrous international F3000 campaigns.
ORECA's Hugues de Chaunac was his saviour, placing Aiello in his BMW squad in French Supertourisme in 1993. He would win four races in his debut tin-top season, and was quickly head-hunted by the factory Peugeot team. He claimed the French title in 1994 in his 405 Mi16, before moving across the border to the German STW Cup with the same team in '96, now in a potent new 406.
Aiello served his intent with victory at Assen in only his second weekend in the series, going on to score another two wins and finish third in points behind Emanuele Pirro (Audi) and Steve Soper (BMW). The following year, he swept to the title after a season-long tussle with BMW's Joachim Winkelhock – the driver he cites as his favourite rival behind DTM legend Bernd Schneider.
In his final year in the German series in '98, Aiello fell just three points short of BMW's Johnny Cecotto in a titanic title-decider at the Nurburgring, despite winning one more race than the Venezuelan over the course of the season.
Arguably his greatest feat was scooping the British title in his first season with the RML Nissan squad. Signed in a deal worth a reputed £600,000 to replace Ford-bound Anthony Reid – despite a rival bid from Williams Renault – Aiello arrived with no knowledge of the British tracks or the Primera.
He was also wary of driving for an English team, after a bad experience with Pacific in F3000, but brought ace engineer Ludovic Lacroix with him.
That was essential to shortcutting his learning curve, as he recalls: "I remember the first time at Thruxton, we had a test one week before the race. After five new sets of tyres, I was 1.5s off David [Leslie]. I told my engineer: 'There's no way we can compete, we are too far away!' We decided to work on the race set-up, and the car was impossible to drive on the fast corners after three laps – it was so loose! I said to Ludo [Lacroix]: 'we'd be better off going to the beach than this racetrack next weekend.'
"In reality, we worked a lot, looked at the data, and every day between then and a race weekend I thought about what we could do. When we arrived back at the track, I was four-tenths off in qually. Then I won the two races. It took so much energy though!"
He scored his maiden win at Silverstone in round two, the first of 10 victories. His main opposition came from team-mate Leslie, but a complicated intra-team contract scenario clouded the situation – leading to a clumsy team orders nonsense at Donington.
Besides that blip, his relationship with Leslie and the team remained strong.
Aiello undoubtedly had the least obvious weaknesses of the touring car elite, and it took a lot to rattle him – no doubt a legacy of his years in a two-car Peugeot operation against the massed ranks of Audis, BMWs and Opel in Germany.
A rare instance of him blowing his top was his blatant removal of BTCC rival Jason Plato at Knockhill in '99, for which he was disqualified.
He admits today: "He was closing the door everywhere, braking on the way out of corners, I just couldn't overtake him... He was so annoying, I took him out."
Q&A
Did you enjoy driving these cars?
From the first time I drove an ORECA BMW at Le Castellet, I found it very interesting. At a fast corner like Signes, in a formula car it was easily flat-out. But in a touring car, you had to shift down a gear and play with the steering wheel to keep the car on the right line. I really loved this kind of driving.
What was the key to being so quick?
"At Peugeot, I was fighting against BMWs and Audis, and I realised very quickly you had to settle the car with oversteer. My style of driving is to have the car as balanced as possible. I knew this was the best way to preserve my tyres, and with Peugeot I had the chance to build the car around my style of driving. It's the only way to win a championship.
How did the different series compare?
The big difference from France was that in Germany and England, the fans come up to you; they are not afraid to speak to you. In France, it's a shame they don't do that. In England especially, I had a great relationship with the fans. There we some old ladies, they would come to every race to see me – great!
1. Alain Menu
British champion (1997 and 2000)
Alain Menu was just another driver whose single-seater possibilities had dried up when he landed a seat with the Prodrive-run BMW junior team in the 1992 BTCC. Little did he realise that this was a career-defining move that would result in him becoming the only driver to win the BTCC title twice during the Super Touring era.
"At that time, I was not really interested in touring cars," admits Menu. "It never crossed my mind that the BTCC and Super Touring would get as big as it did. I was quick straight away but the problem we had was we were on Pirelli tyres and at that time we were not the best, so we struggled."
A podium finish at Snetterton was the high-point before a quad bike accident put him out mid-season.
That might have been it for Menu in the BTCC. "I was very close to not getting anything for '93," he says. "BMW decided they could not keep all the drivers and I was the last to arrive so the first to go.
"But Renault signed me up. If it wasn't for them, it would have been very difficult to find something else."
The Renault 19 was not a great car, but Menu outshone reigning champion team-mate Tim Harvey, scoring close to double his points and claiming a maiden win in a damp race at Donington Park. It was the first of 36 victories in the BTCC.
With Williams getting involved in 1995, it wasn't until '97 that Menu finally won the title, wining half of that season's races.
After returning to Prodrive in '99, he added a second, last-grasp, crown driving the Ford Mondeo in 2000. While it was clearly the best car of that final season, Menu had to beat Rickard Rydell and Anthony Reid in identical machinery to do it.
Maybe a few were as quick as Menu in a Super Tourer, but there were certainly none faster. There were occasional ragged edges, but a fully-lit Menu hustling a front-wheel drive repmobile around Oulton Park, where he won nine times, as if it were is a high-powered formula car, is a defining image of the era. And the success Menu had certainly makes up for the fact he did not go as far as he should have done in formula racing.
"I came second many times in Formula Ford and the BTCC, but I never won a title until 1997," he says. "I wouldn't necessarily say it was my proudest moment, but it was very sweet. I had some great times in my career, but for me the years 1995-2000 were the best.
"I would go back there now."
Q&A
What was so special about the Super Touring era?
It was the racing. The years in the UK were great. The crowds, the enthusiasm of the punters was really nice. The level of competition, whether it was drivers, teams, manufacturers, I've never had that since. The only championship which comes close to it is TC2000 in Argentina. The level there is so high.
How difficult were the cars to drive?
The Super Tourers were very tricky to drive on the limit, to get the last two or three tenths was not easy. It was a real challenge to do a fantastic lap on certain tracks.
Fundamentally, the Super Tourers were not so different to the S2000 cars you later raced. Why were they so much more challenging?
The biggest difference was the aero we had in the last few years in particular. It wasn't single-seater levels of downforce, but you would lose front-end grip if you followed a car too closely. And we could brake much later and had more grip from the tyres.
Who would you be most comfortable going side-by-side through Craner Curves with?
David Leslie. I had loads of respect for David as a driver and a human being. I knew I could trust him. I remember doing a full lap of Thruxton side-by-side with him and always gave each other room. There are not many other drivers I would have done it with.
And the least?
Quite a few! John Cleland... Cleland... and maybe Cleland! I would have thought twice before doing it. He was not a dirty driver who pushed people off, but he certainly wouldn't give me the room that David did!
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