Posted 28 April 2024 - 13:40
The "Third World" Racing Rovers
In the 1983 British Saloon Car Championship, the first year of the Group A regs that preceded Supertouring, the works Austin Rover Group team consisting of Tom Walkinshaw Racing and their trio of Rover Vitesses (or SD1s) dominated the top class (there were only 3 classes in 1983), winning all 11 races with Steve Soper winning the title outright from team-mate Peter Lovett by 5 points (68-63). Only the middle class Champion Andy Rouse in his Alfa Romeo managed to split the TWR Rovers in the outright standings, outscoring Jeff Allam by 8 points and just 2 behind Lovett. Such was the extent of the TWR Rovers' dominance that their nearest challenger in their class was Tony Lanfranchi's Opel Monza with only a quarter of the amount of points Soper scored and only 16th overall outright.
Job done, right? Well, no.
During the 7th round of the Championship at Donington Park, Frank Sytner of the BMW team protested the TWR Rovers over the size of their rear wheel arch inserts. The claims that the TWR Rovers' rear wheel-arches were over-sized and non-homologated parts were included in their engines, suspicions suggested the inclusion of Volvo rockers as used on the TR8 rally cars using the same basic V8 engine. The counter claim was that the covers had been ‘found’ at the Solihull factory and used in good will. TWR attempted to argue that there was such a thing as an Africa market SD1 with larger wheel arches to cope with mud, hence the nickname ''Third World Racing". The protests continued into the following two races but then appeared to die down.
For now.
The protests and scrutineering continued into the 1984 season and the matter was eventually taken to a Tribunal of Enquiry, chaired by veteran legal counsel Lord Hartley Shawcross. The result was the RAC disqualified the Rover team entirely over bodywork irregularities and engine installation issues, handing the 1983 title to Rouse, by which time, it was July 1984, over a year after Sytner's initial protest. The Austin Rover Group immediately withdrew all their entries (including those in the lower classes) from the Championship (by which time, 6 races had taken place in 1984) and all their points were redistributed. The TWR Rover trio were allowed to keep all their points from 1983 though, similar to Michael Schumacher in the 1997 F1 season.
Tom Walkinshaw did make a one-off guest appearance in one of his Rovers in 1985 at Brands Hatch and won, with Jeff Allam repeating that feat in 1986, but otherwise, the damage to the championship's reputation and those of all else concerned was done and the repercussions continued into 1985 and 1986 with the BSCC losing entries left, right and centre until it was changed to its current name of the British Touring Car Championship for the 1987 season. Ironically, Andy Rouse won the 1984 title in his own Rover Vitesse that was legal and the car would race in the series until the end of the 1988 season. The biggest loser out of this whole sorry saga though was Steve Soper who was destined never to win the title in his domestic tin-top series though he did go on to win the Japanese title in 1995.
The recent passing of Alan Minshaw, who was the bottom class Champion in 1983 and ended up as the outright Runner-up after the Rover exclusion, brought this to my attention. To dominate a championship to the point of taking a clean sweep of the race wins and then lose it all several months into the following season because it turned out you were running illegal parts on your cars the whole time makes for a rather glaring and embarrassing failure. At least TWR were able to rebuild their reputation running the works Volvo team in the 1990s and ARG were able to narrowly prevent a Vauxhall clean sweep in 2001 when they returned as a works team under the MG Rover moniker, with the win in question coming, somewhat appropriately, at Brands Hatch!
