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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:47 am 
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hedgey666 wrote:
codename_47 wrote:
On balance I'd have to say Muller was the better driver, but they're both as dirty as each other tbh


Both arses but Muller is the only "world class" arse. Plato's a national driver, doubt he would have achieved too much on the world stage.


This is why I prefer Muller over Plato. They are both arses, but Muller backs it up with skill and raw car control. He's done some incredible stuff. Plato is an average driver, who has only achieved success when the series was very weak. Whenever the quality goes up, or his car isn't the best on the grid, he is no where.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:13 pm 
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That's quite a claim ellis, not one I specifically agree with either as in reality then Matt Neal almost falls into the same bucket (2005 and 2006). 2010 was a great triumph for Plato in a very competitive field and 2001 wasn't exactly a walk over considering the inhouse battle with Muller.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:28 pm 
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I don't particularly regard Shedden or Neal as actual world class drivers, and I certainly don't regard Jason as one given his continued complaints about other cars until his car is made the best.

Muller has gone onto WTCC with extreme success. Jason continued on in a national series, through some of it's weakest times, and only once achieved another title. Given the amount of times competitors cars were pegged back to help him over the years, and his massive amounts of experience compared to those like Andrew Jordan, Giovanardi, Shedden, and maybe even Turkington. Jasons been around forever, driven some of the best cars to have ever graced the series, got countless cars pegged back, and been given countless get-out-of-jail-free cards. To have only have achieved the title twice should be considered quite weak IMO.

And that's just looking at stats. Incidents like this are why I prefer Muller over Jason, purely on a driving level.



Muller is essentially a mix of Plato and Giovanardi. He's a complete bell end, but he has some amazing car control skills.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:37 pm 
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I don't necessarily agree with your point entirely as Plato admits he plays the cartoon villain on purpose. He's moaned about cars but so has some of his rivals (remember 2010 and "those ugly ugly Fords). His complaints in 2011 were justified based on what he was promised. I don't really support him as much as I once did but I wouldn't call him an average driver. Matt Neal did some giant killing stuff in the late 90's but in reality only achieved his success when given a huge car advantage in the weakest field in BTCC history (2005 and 2006) and then when no-one could touch the superiority of the NGTC engined Honda in 2011. In other years both Plato and Neal are hugely competitive but neither are average.

As for the video, pretty sure we've seen some great saves by JP. Brands Hatch 2009 springs to mind.

That all said I agree entirely with you closing comment.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:35 pm 
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Kals: Plato defender!

Typical American, knows nothing! :p

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 10:43 pm 
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codename_47 wrote:
Kals: Plato defender!

Typical American, knows nothing! :p


Well at least I've got you to bring me down a level :p

By the way, I've recently sorted out some new secure webspace and I plan to share some of my BTCC collection. I'm thinking of 1992 and 1993 TOCA Shoot Outs to start with. Any requests?

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 1:49 am 
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How about all of it? :p

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:26 am 
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But which part first?

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 12:36 pm 
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Well, I've never seen the '93 Shootout, so how about that?

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:02 pm 
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Sure thing pimmy. I'll work on this over the weekend.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 1:47 am 
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kals wrote:
codename_47 wrote:
Kals: Plato defender!

Typical American, knows nothing! :p


Well at least I've got you to bring me down a level :p

By the way, I've recently sorted out some new secure webspace and I plan to share some of my BTCC collection. I'm thinking of 1992 and 1993 TOCA Shoot Outs to start with. Any requests?


I'd like to see some British GP supports if possible, as the usual Bernie trick of holding the footage hostage unless you're willing to pay probably more than the rest of the season combined to show your own championship racing on his bill means they're not seen as much as the regular races.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 4:32 pm 
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1991 British GP support race and 1993 TOCA Shoot Out posted here - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8586

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 2:50 pm 
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1992 and 1993 F1 Support races added here - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8586&p=751139#p751603

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:00 pm 
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Autosport.com wrote:
When Volvo raced an estate
As Honda brings the estate shape back to the BTCC, GARY WATKINS tells the inside story of Volvo's 850 estate programme 20 years ago - but just whose idea was it?

By Gary Watkins
AUTOSPORT writer


Surely it was some kind of joke... The idea that anyone would choose to run an estate in the highly competitive world of the British Touring Car Championship seemed preposterous in the extreme. The fact that the late Tom Walkinshaw was behind Volvo's entry with the unconventional body shape 20 years ago only fuelled speculation that it was a wind-up.

The possibility that TWR would run an 850 estate was talked about the moment the stories of Volvo's return to top-flight touring car racing broke in October 1993.

The programme was launched with an estate show car - though there was also a saloon present around the back - at the Stockholm motor show in February 1994, and it was definitively stated at the Geneva show in March that the Swedish manufacturer would be racing the 'shooting brake'. Yet the most cynical of doubters still didn't believe that TWR wouldn't be racing a saloon when the first car rolled off the truck at the BTCC opener at Thruxton in April.

Their suspicions were heightened when they looked through the grill of the first car that appeared and couldn't see an engine! Only when the bonnet came up and they saw that there was an engine in there - mounted right up against the front bulkhead - did they believe that an estate car would be taking on the massed saloons from Vauxhall, Ford, BMW, Alfa Romeo et al.

The ever-mischievous Walkinshaw and Volvo were happy to play up to this attitude. AUTOSPORT ran a story after Stockholm headlined "We'll run most competitive car", but the reality is that the programme had been conceived with the estate as the vehicle of choice.

Martin Rybeck, the board member in charge of motorsport at Volvo, reckons there was a deliberate ploy to "keep people guessing". The estate idea was about maximising publicity during a season when, in all likelihood, the Volvos wouldn't be making headlines with their results, so the 'will-they-won't-they?' stories were the perfect lead-in.

Yet who came up with the idea to go racing with an estate isn't entirely clear. Andy Morrison, one of Walkinshaw's able and trusted subalterns, reckons the idea was part of his pitch to Rybeck.

"It was a cold call: I didn't know him and he didn't know me," explains Morrison. "We said we could help them with their image and wouldn't it be a wonderful idea if... I think that caught their imagination."

Rybeck reckons it was the other way around and that he contacted TWR through Walkinshaw and that an estate in year one was always in his plans. There is, just to add to the intrigue, also a third version of the story.

This involves the idea of a touring car programme being raised during an idle conversation between TWR design boss Ian Callum, who was responsible for the shape of the Aston Martin DB7, and Volvo design director and fellow Brit Peter Horbury. This version of events is dismissed with a profanity by Rybeck.

Rybeck's story is lent credibility by the the existence of a test car, commissioned by Volvo, that was already up and running during the early phase of the negotiations between TWR and Volvo. This car, produced by Steffanson Automotive, was built around an estate shell.

"We wanted to produce our own car to see if the idea could work," says Rybeck, who dismisses the rumour that the Steffanson car was an estate because that was the only bodyshell available at the time. "We'd already done windtunnel testing with an estate before we built it."

The existence of this car was sprung on TWR during one of the early meetings between the prospective partners in July, a couple of months after contact was made.

"They said you must come to our test track, which was in the middle of a forest somewhere," recalls Morrison. "This red estate car appeared that we knew nothing about."

That was the first surprise. The next was the suggestion that Walkinshaw drive it.

"Tom was looking at me and I was looking at him, and I could tell that he did not want to get in the car," says Morrison. "I told him to get in and keep smiling."

Richard Owen, who would subsequently design the Volvo estate Super Tourer, has vivid memories of what turned out to be a very initial short run. (Bizarrely, though, some of the other players in this story dispute his presence.)

"I was standing there with Ross Brawn [brought along as a heavy-hitter]," recalls Owen. "Off Tom went and he seemed to be gone a long time. Just as I'd said to Ross, 'This must be a long lap', the car reappeared and looked a funny shape. As it got closer, we could see the driver's door was open and the bonnet was folded over the roof."

The bonnet had pulled out of its pins approaching 125mph, showering its driver — sans helmet and wearing an Armani suit - with glass!

A contract between Volvo and TWR didn't follow for another couple of months. Part of the reason was opposition Rybeck faced from other Volvo board members to working with a company that it had faced in the old European series in the 1980s. The battles - both on and off the racetrack - between Volvo's Belgian RAS Sport team and TWR's Jaguar and Rover squads were still fresh in the minds of some of the old guard.

"Do you remember the sticker on the bumper of the Jaguar XJSs?" asks Rybeck. "It said, 'Real men don't drive Volvos'. There were lots of people at Volvo who weren't supportive of the idea."

The contract was finally signed on September 7, though the idea of running an estate wasn't entirely popular among the engineers charged with designing the car. Rybeck even suggests that Walkinshaw was against the idea initially.

That's backed up by a story told by TWR marketing man Andy King. "On the trip back from Sweden that time, I remember saying to Tom, 'Why not the estate? It would make sense from a marketing perspective.' It was one of those things you said after taking a deep breath. I thought he was going to throw me out of the plane!"

Yet the idea of running an estate wasn't as silly as it sounded in an era when aerodynamics had yet to become - not for a few months anyway - a significant factor.

"What manufacturers don't advertise is that road cars produce lift," explains Owen. "The estate produced marginally less than the saloon. I've always been big on centre of gravity, but running a bit more steelwork higher up and further aft was a disadvantage offset by the better aero figures of the estate."

The estate - the Volvo 850 SE/GLT to give it its correct name - didn't prove to be a success on the racetrack in the hands of Rickard Rydell and Jan Lammers in 1994. The design period was short and the car was late. It didn't run until a week before the Thruxton opener, its shakedown taking place on Walkinshaw's drive at Broadstone Manor.

"We drove it from his house down to the front gate and back," recalls Rydell.

"Jan drove it up and down and was not sure about it. He said, 'This is a bit strange, maybe you should try it.'"

The car tested for the first time at Snetterton on the Monday and Tuesday ahead of the first race, but its weird characteristics were all too apparent around the fast sweeps of Thruxton.

"You couldn't stay at the edge of the track; you had to be one metre inside because the car would suddenly jump to the left or to the right either on the bumps or when you were accelerating," continues Rydell.

The car did improve, but was never truly competitive, notching up a best result of fifth - one each for Rydell and Lammers.

"The car was quite slow in terms of change of direction," explains Rydell. "It was OK if you only turned once, but in a chicane where you had to change one way and then another it wasn't good. The rear didn't really want to follow the front."

That characteristic explains why the Volvo estate was at its most competitive at Snetterton in May. Rydell qualified third at a circuit largely made up of fast, flowing corners that didn't penalise the cumbersome estate. A problem starting the car ahead of the green-flag lap meant Rydell wasn't able to capitalise on his qualifying performance.

Everyone insists the estate was also going to be a one-year wonder, though any chance of the quirky body shape being carried over into year two disappeared courtesy of a change in regulations that followed the introduction of Alfa's bewinged 155TS Silverstone. The FIA freed up the aerodynamics for the following season, allowing everyone a rear wing within certain constraints.

"The rules said that the rear wing had to be within the profile of the car and not visible from the front," recalls John Gentry, who took technical charge of the project on Owen's departure early in the season.

"It had to be below the roofline, ahead of the rear bumper, so it left us nowhere to put the wing. If ever there was a thought of sticking with the estate, that effectively took it out of our hands."

An estate did run with aerodynamic appendages after the end of the 1994 season, though you wouldn't have known it looking at the car. To get a head start developing its 1995 contender, TWR commissioned XJ Engineering, which built the early Volvo shells, to convert one of the estates.

"We got them to modify an estate by chopping the back off it," recalls Gentry. "And you couldn't tell that the shell started life as an estate."

The saloon was, says Rydell, "a much more together car". The Swede took no fewer than 13 poles over the course of 1995, but ultimately fell short in the championship race and ended up third. Rydell reckons that the Volvo's use of Dunlop tyres, which didn't have the consistency of its rivals' Michelins, was the major factor.

Volvo did go on to win the BTCC in 1998 with Rydell and the second iteration of the car that would replace the 850, the smaller and more nimble S40, but the success of TWR's link-up with Volvo shouldn't only be measured on the racetrack.

TWR formed a joint-venture company with the Swedish firm to develop and manufacture an entirely new sporting model. AutoNova, in which TWR had a 51 per cent stake, produced the C70 coupe and cabriolets at a new factory.

Other motorsport projects were considered too. Morrison reveals that a programme in the growing sport of truck racing was considered, and there was a proposal for an extreme 850 estate to take on the challenge of the Pikes Peak hillclimb.

"That one got quite a long way down the road, although metal was never cut," he recalls. "It was going to be an estate car shape with a mid-engined, turbocharged six-cylinder with four-wheel drive."

That car might have done in the USA what the original 850 BTCC racer did in the UK. For all the dispute over whose idea it was, the estate did what it set out to do. Joke or no joke, it garnered column inches far and wide.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2014 11:47 pm 
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Watching the 2006 review for the first time in years. Quite an important year - the arrival of Giovanardi, Shedden, Eurotech and Motorbase, and the last year for the Astra and the dominance of the BTC rules package. Great racing despite a lack of depth on the grid (compared to 2014, anyway). It was the year I got back into the BTCC after a few years of ignoring it, so it was the only time I remember racing at Mondello Park - I'd not object if it came back in place of one of the rounds at Brands. Guessing they don't have the money, though - best chance of a new circuit on the calendar in the next few years is probably Ebbw Vale


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:14 pm 
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1992 and 1994 TOCA Shoot Outs added here - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8586&p=751139#p759292

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:11 pm 
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I just found this. It is David Coulthard testing the 1995 BTCC Williams Renault Laguna, normally driven by Will Hoy and Alain Menu. I believe this test was part of a comparison between a road goad Laguna, the BTCC Laguna and the 1995 F1 Williams Renault and conducted on the Silverstone GP circuit.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:56 pm 
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Yeah, Menu & Coulthard swapped cars.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 8:20 pm 
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I remember reading the article back in 1995. I just found another picture...

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PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 10:24 pm 
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I've been looking through the results from 1995 as I don't have the review from that year, and I noticed that in the first Snetterton race, the top 3 was Kelvin Burt (works Ford), Patrick Watts (works Peugeot) and Robb Gravett (privateer Ford). Richard Kaye in another privateer Ford finished 5th. What happened to produce that order?


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