15 replies to this topic

[Greyhead]

I make my own "mods" for an old PC game, currently I am working my way through all the BTCC Super Touring seasons. Unfortunately for me I have a real liking for useless detail and finding out who ran some of the teams back then is proving to be difficult. So I was wondering if anybody here can help. I could do with some information on the following teams:

Renault Dealer Racing ('93 and '94) - I know a team called GB Racing ran the squad in '93 and '94, but I have no other info, the name of the team boss would be helpful.

Maxted Motorsport ('94) - This was run by Kevin Maxted, in 1994 they switched from Vauxhalls to Toyotas and ran James Kaye - were they a Toyota junior team as Park Lane were in '93 or is it just a coincidence?

Peugeot Sport - I believe Mick Linford was Peugeot UK's motorsport boss for many years, but who actually ran the BTCC team?

Team HMSO ('94 and '95) - Nigel Smith drove this car, who ran it? I seem to remember at the time RML having something to do with it but as they were running the works Vauxhall operation by then it seems unlikely.

Harlow Motorsport ('94) - they ran a single Renault 19 for Nigel Albon, but who was the boss?

Alfa Corse ('94) - Surprisingly I can't find any info about their BTCC squad, despite the fact that they won the title convincingly. I read that Giorgio Pianta was boss of Alfa Corse up until around this time, but I don't know how much he had to do with the BTCC team, seeing as they were also in the DTM. Any ideas?

If anyone can help, I would be very grateful! Thanks in advance.

[Kevan]

Answers in bold

I make my own "mods" for an old PC game, currently I am working my way through all the BTCC Super Touring seasons. Unfortunately for me I have a real liking for useless detail and finding out who ran some of the teams back then is proving to be difficult. So I was wondering if anybody here can help. I could do with some information on the following teams:

Renault Dealer Racing ('93 and '94) - I know a team called GB Racing ran the squad in '93 and '94, but I have no other info, the name of the team boss would be helpful.

Team boss was Giles Butterfield- he was an ex-F3 driver. They came in with little touring car history, they had run a Renault 21 Turbo in production saloons a year or two earler (possibly driven by Butterfield?). They were apparently part of a company called Metal Composite Technology, and based in Buckingham, with support from Renault Sport in France

Maxted Motorsport ('94) - This was run by Kevin Maxted, in 1994 they switched from Vauxhalls to Toyotas and ran James Kaye - were they a Toyota junior team as Park Lane were in '93 or is it just a coincidence?

No, it seems to have been a totally privateer effort.
According to an interview with Kaye in the Touring Car Year annual for '94, they had a good relationship with Toyota, but no official support, apart from being given a good deal on the price of buying the car, an ex-Toyota GB team car from 1993, bought on Kaye's behalf by an un-named Park Lane client in Asia (Kaye was apparently an employee of Park Lane) and intended to be shipped out to Asia at the end of the season. Kevin Maxted's outfit were hired to run it, and backing came from Kaye's existing sponsors.

It was a very low-budget operation, Kaye says one of the big worries was damaging the car- both because of the risk that the Asian client might then refuse to take it at the end of the year, and because he and the team didn't have the budget to do major repairs if it got shunted.

Maxted also ran a car for long-time customer Ian Khan- a Carina for the first few races, then Khan's existing Cavalier until he pulled out around mid-season

Peugeot Sport - I believe Mick Linford was Peugeot UK's motorsport boss for many years, but who actually ran the BTCC team?


It was an in-house Peugeot effort- based in the Peugeot factory at Coventry, with Linford acting as Team Manager. This lasted until 1997 or so, when MSD (Motor Sport Developments) were hired to run the cars- they'd previously run Honda's BTCC programme until Prodrive took over.

Team HMSO ('94 and '95) - Nigel Smith drove this car, who ran it? I seem to remember at the time RML having something to do with it but as they were running the works Vauxhall operation by then it seems unlikely.

Nigel ran his own car, with support from 'a mixture of family and professionals'. His wife Jill was Team Manager, and they had a full-time engineer, Peter Allnut, who'd been involved with Smith's earlier single-seater projects. I think the car was ex-RML, so they might have had some technical help from RML on a customer basis, though there's no mention of this in the book as far as I can tell

Harlow Motorsport ('94) - they ran a single Renault 19 for Nigel Albon, but who was the boss?

Harlow was run by Len Simmonds with ex-Clio racer Steve Waudby as Team Manager, and a couple of full-time employees, expanding to five people on a race weekend

Alfa Corse ('94) - Surprisingly I can't find any info about their BTCC squad, despite the fact that they won the title convincingly. I read that Giorgio Pianta was boss of Alfa Corse up until around this time, but I don't know how much he had to do with the BTCC team, seeing as they were also in the DTM. Any ideas?

Alfa Corse were run from Italy, based at a former Lancia facility at Chivasso. Although Pianta was boss of Alfa Corse, the BTCC team was run by Ninni Russo. They had a UK base and some support from Prodrive in Banbury, (Prodrive's Steve Farrell was race engineer on Simoni's car, while Tarquini's race engineer was Maurizio Nardon, ex-Ferrari F1) and used a hotel near Banbury as a base for the drivers and crew when 'on tour'. Cars were prepared at Chivasso, and apparently four cars were used- two being in preparation in Italy, and two ready for use in the UK at any given time, and rotated between race weekends.

If anyone can help, I would be very grateful! Thanks in advance.

No problem. If you can get hold of them a good source for this kind of info is either the 'Touring Car Year' annual season reviews, published from about 1991-99ish, or the Media Guides published by TOCA at the beginning of each season. I've got most of the 'TCY' books (all of the information posted comes from the 1993/4 editions), and a couple of Media Guides, so if you need anything else, let me know and I'll look it up

Edited by Kevan, 20 November 2009 - 10:09.

[Greyhead]

Wow! Didn't think anyone would actually know this stuff! Many thousands of thanks Kevan. I'll look out for those books, my touring car book collection could do with some padding out since it's currently at, er, zero.

[Kevan]

Wow! Didn't think anyone would actually know this stuff! Many thousands of thanks Kevan. I'll look out for those books, my touring car book collection could do with some padding out since it's currently at, er, zero.

If it helps, the first one was 1991 I think and was basically a magazine. The later ones, were publised from 1992 up to something like 1998/9 I think, and were hardback books.

There's another book which is still published annually- Touring Car World (started in 1994 I think) which is a paperback, published in Italy each year, and covers most of the 2litre touring cars series each year, with results tables, entry lists, and pics- no detailed race reports though, and not much on individual teams.

Edited by Kevan, 20 November 2009 - 12:06.

[Greyhead]

Aye, I've seen the TCW books, the recent ones are mainly WTCC-based aren't they. I had a quick look on Amazon earlier, found a few of the TCY books you mentioned (1993 through to about '98) so I may well spend some of me hard-earned on them.

[David Wright]

As owner of these books and a modder myself, you will find these books a great source of information and worth every penny. AbeBooks also have some. What game is your mod for?

[Greyhead]

The venerable "Grand Prix 2". I don't like to keep up with the times too much. If I had my way we'd all still have Commodore 64's...

[Gregor Marshall]

Was the Renault team not run by Keith Greene?

[Kevan]

Was the Renault team not run by Keith Greene?

Yes, Keith Greene was Team Manager. Apparently John Miles of Lotus and Robin Herd were supposed to have been signed up as 'Consultants' to the project, but nothing came of this in the end, although Lotus provided Harvey's race engineer for the first couple of rounds. The majority of design and development work on the 19s was done by Renault Sport in France, the cars being designed by Yannick Kerguelen, who came from a rallying background

Edited by Kevan, 23 November 2009 - 06:44.

[Gregor Marshall]

Well the Renaults were rubbish in the dry but very well prepared and were great in the wet, had 2 or 3 wins (all Harvey I think) in the first year.

[Kevan]

Well the Renaults were rubbish in the dry but very well prepared and were great in the wet, had 2 or 3 wins (all Harvey I think) in the first year.

Yes- the race at the Donington European GP meeting, and another wet race at Donington late-season. As you say, the car was awful in the dry, but good in the wet...

Can't remember if there was another without looking it up, or whether it was Menu or Harvey who won

Edited by Kevan, 25 November 2009 - 16:57.

[Victor_RO]

Yes- the race at the Donington European GP meeting, and another wet race at Donington late-season. As you say, the car was awful in the dry, but good in the wet...

Can't remember if there was another without looking it up, or whether it was Menu or Harvey who won

Tim won in the Euro GP meeting, Alain won race 2 of the late-season double-header.

[Lee Towers]

Menu was pretty special later on the season in the 19, really wringing its neck, he was pretty spectacular through Church at Thruxton in a late season round, I think won by David Leslie.

Edited by Lee Towers, 25 November 2009 - 19:52.

[Hill]

I make my own "mods" for an old PC game, currently I am working my way through all the BTCC Super Touring seasons. Unfortunately for me I have a real liking for useless detail and finding out who ran some of the teams back then is proving to be difficult. So I was wondering if anybody here can help. I could do with some information on the following teams:

Renault Dealer Racing ('93 and '94) - I know a team called GB Racing ran the squad in '93 and '94, but I have no other info, the name of the team boss would be helpful.

Maxted Motorsport ('94) - This was run by Kevin Maxted, in 1994 they switched from Vauxhalls to Toyotas and ran James Kaye - were they a Toyota junior team as Park Lane were in '93 or is it just a coincidence?

Peugeot Sport - I believe Mick Linford was Peugeot UK's motorsport boss for many years, but who actually ran the BTCC team?

Team HMSO ('94 and '95) - Nigel Smith drove this car, who ran it? I seem to remember at the time RML having something to do with it but as they were running the works Vauxhall operation by then it seems unlikely.

Harlow Motorsport ('94) - they ran a single Renault 19 for Nigel Albon, but who was the boss?

Alfa Corse ('94) - Surprisingly I can't find any info about their BTCC squad, despite the fact that they won the title convincingly. I read that Giorgio Pianta was boss of Alfa Corse up until around this time, but I don't know how much he had to do with the BTCC team, seeing as they were also in the DTM. Any ideas?

If anyone can help, I would be very grateful! Thanks in advance.

Hi, hope I haven't dug this topic up from too far back! I couldn't resist adding some (minor) detail concerning the best era of my favourite racing series!

I read an interview with Tim Harvey in Autosport a while back, and he said that having driven for BMW, Tim was used to the designer in Germany wearing rather expensive grey suits and there was a very apparent air of professionalism. When he visited Renault in France, the designer was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts which he felt was slightly odd...and when he noticed a handbrake in the car became very worried. When he asked the reason for the handbrake, the designer replied "the test driver is Jean Ragnotti and he likes to use the handbrake!" The 19 was so incredibly soft, and with its Michelin tyres it only really shone in the rain, taking a win for each driver that year. Reminds me of the '98 Mondeo.

I remember another feature which detailed how if Jacques Villeneuve hadn't driven for Williams in 1996 or 1997 (Sorry, I really can't remember which) Alain Menu would have got the drive. This was accompanied with a picture of Alain testing the Rothmans car. To think the BTCC could have been a feeder series to F1!

Peugeot was really the last true 'works' entry with the team working on the car in the Coventry factory...much like Synchro Motorsport more recently who were/are a bunch of Honda employees working on the car after hours and taking holiday from work to go testing and racing. In the end the level of the series reached a point where Peugeot had to use the services of an outside company, and as previously mentioned, MSD got the nod. There was a LOT of politics involved though between the all conquering French team and the 'poor relation' British team. A lack of co-operation stifled the British team somewhat. For me, Patrick Watts was much much better than the cars he was given and better than some of the Super Touring champions. His wild driving style was as a result of having to drag uncompetitive cars into places they never should have achieved, which sometimes led to quite spectacular moments!

The 1994 review tape lists James Kayes car as "owned by a Singapore businessman", and Nigel Smiths car was the ex-Ecurie Ecosse David Leslie Cavalier. (Was that in turn an ex-Dave Cook car?)

Alfa Corse were originally a rally team, and team principle Nini Russo could be seen as the team boss of FIATs(?) entry into the IRC last year...looking no older now than then!

Further to what was said earlier in this thread, the Touring Car Year books are fantastic. Really well researched, brilliant photographs and magnificent detail. I've been trying to find the 1995 version for years as my favourite driver won the title but no luck I recommend also British Motorsport Year. It goes into more technical detail of the cars and is very absorbing. Unfortunately for me I'm away from home and I can't reference to those books.

[Greyhead]

I managed to get hold of the '94 and '95 books a couple of weeks ago from Amazon, have a look on there, I think they cost me about three quid each.

[Falcadore]

Kaye had some fun that year. The sister car to the Park Lane '94 Carina landed in Australia that year for Campbell Little of V8 Supercar fame today to run for a young Kiwi open wheeler driver called Greg Murphy to drive. Murphy wasn't available every round and Kaye himself drove the car a few times, including having a grandstand seat to the great BMW punch-up. Kaye was sitting in third on a dark wet day at Winton when the two factory BMWs in front got into each other and locked their wheels together and leapt for the concrete. An agrieved Paul Morris leapt from his car and raced over to the drivers window of his team mate and boss Tony Longhurst and started throwing punches in the window convinced Longhurst had deliberately driven him off the road rather than the cars becoming uncontrollable after the brief moment of locked wheels snapped Longhurst steering column. Kaye aparently laughed so hard watching that he almost crashed himself.