Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The British Touring Car Championship: We Were There

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The British Touring Car Championship: We Were There · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept
• 0:07
  sports bike rider hailing from California.
• 0:10
  He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and
• 0:12
  fast and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new
• 0:18
  and old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:35
  Good day.
• 0:36
  Good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:37
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian with high school buddy Mark Gamy.
• 0:42
  How the devil are you, mark?
• 0:44
  Bongiovanni, sir, I'm, uh, very well, thank you very much.
• 0:47
  But, um, yeah, doing all right.
• 0:49
  All right.
• 0:50
  I'm glad to hear it.
• 0:52
  The British Touring Car Championship, that is our topic for the day.
• 0:57
  And, uh, look, with the Russell of the paper shows that I have an agenda.
• 1:02
  It's gonna be a surprise to you.
• 1:04
  And look, let's not beat round the bush.
• 1:06
  Basically what we're gonna talk about today is BTCC in the nineties,
• 1:10
  which is the halian period of it.
• 1:12
  But what I want to do is, uh, put a bit of context, uh, uh, around that a little bit.
• 1:18
  My first bullet here is that, you know, the first BTCC championship,
• 1:22
  can't remember what it was called then.
• 1:24
  It was called BTCC is British Touring Car Championship.
• 1:27
  It was called something different in the fifties, but there's
• 1:30
  basically been a saloon car.
• 1:33
  Championship in Britain ever since, I think 1950 or something like
• 1:38
  that, like a driver championship.
• 1:40
  It's been around for, for a really, really long time.
• 1:44
  And in that sense, you know, you probably don't know this Mark, but this is NASCAR
• 1:48
  month on the Motoring Podcast Network.
• 1:50
  So Eric, the producer, loves me to, you know, stay on point.
• 1:55
  So here I am.
• 1:56
  I've, I've done one pod about.
• 1:58
  Self-driving cars in the future.
• 2:00
  So that fits with the NASCAR theme, doesn't it?
• 2:02
  But this BTCC presentation does actually fit with the NASCAR theme somewhat because
• 2:09
  this is the British version of nascar.
• 2:11
  This is a series A championship, which travels around the British
• 2:15
  Isles visiting all of our narrow.
• 2:18
  Many undulating circuits around Britain and, and Scotland, Wales,
• 2:24
  that kind of thing, isn't it?
• 2:25
  So the first bullet I've got is Hawthorne and Salvadori and racing.
• 2:31
  Mark one and Mark two Jaguars, which were also their road cars.
• 2:35
  Believe it or not.
• 2:36
  They would drive them to and from the track racing them at places like Goodwood.
• 2:41
  It was the British Saloon Car Championship originally.
• 2:43
  I looked it up.
• 2:44
  It was one of the first champion, Tommy Sopwith.
• 2:48
  Uh, it says the inception of the champion was 58 and the first
• 2:51
  Jack Sears one in 58, apparently.
• 2:53
  Oh, right.
• 2:54
  Well, that's awesome because Jack Sears was the very next bullet point on my list.
• 2:59
  Gentleman, Jack Sears, a farmer, a name that's cropped up on this pod really
• 3:03
  recently because that Bianco, white Ferrari, GTO, the hammered, uh, Meum.
• 3:10
  Just recently, he was a second donor of it.
• 3:13
  I mean he, not the second owner, the third owner, John Coombs bought it
• 3:16
  new, raced it a bunch, then it was sold to what Coombs describes as
• 3:22
  that strange man at Slough JA Pierce.
• 3:26
  So I Googled a who this strange man at Slough was, right.
• 3:29
  You obviously would, right?
• 3:30
  I guess he was a racing car breaker.
• 3:33
  So he took the engine.
• 3:35
  Out of it.
• 3:36
  And that went into a Cooper and that raced quite successfully
• 3:40
  in like Formula One-ish, kind of of racing through the sixties.
• 3:45
  So the engine raced on the car was sold to Jack Sears.
• 3:50
  Who painted it red.
• 3:51
  So for most of its life, that white GTO was red and owned by Jack Sears and it
• 3:57
  had a standard two 50 SWB motor in it.
• 4:01
  But that's nothing to do with the British Tour Guard Championship, is it?
• 4:03
  The reason that I put Jack Sears down here is because Sears bought
• 4:07
  a Holman Moody Ford Galaxy.
• 4:10
  Whether it's honking 500 horse.
• 4:13
  4 27 solid lifter motor that was built for the banking of Daytona.
• 4:19
  And uh, it cleaned the fuck up in the British Touring car Championship.
• 4:24
  I read an account of it where he was like, in the first race, he
• 4:28
  was like, I won't drive too hard.
• 4:29
  But then on the first strait, he just like blew the jaguars like way back behind him.
• 4:35
  So that would've been presumably 63 then because he won in 50, he won the
• 4:39
  touring car championship in Fi Saloon Car Champ should say, in 58 in Austin.
• 4:44
  A 1 0 5 Westminster.
• 4:46
  Yeah.
• 4:47
  And then in 63 it says, er, he won it again.
• 4:50
  Ford Galaxy.
• 4:51
  In Ford.
• 4:51
  Lotus Cortina.
• 4:52
  Yeah.
• 4:53
  And thank you Mark, for the, that information because, uh, I feel
• 4:57
  like that flashes out the variety of cars that you could win in.
• 5:01
  Because in Austin, Westminster, I mean it looks quite tall and ponderous,
• 5:04
  but they were actually pretty good.
• 5:06
  And you've been to Goodwood more than I have.
• 5:08
  You see those?
• 5:09
  Austin one oh fives still racing.
• 5:11
  I mean, I went up, the last time I was at Goodwood for the
• 5:14
  revival, there was one racing.
• 5:15
  What I love about those is they have a piece of side trim on the side
• 5:19
  of them that looks like a 57 Chevy.
• 5:22
  But they're of that pre farina era of BMC cars.
• 5:27
  And this pre farina era is important because the reason that the British
• 5:31
  styling houses went to Italy to get their cars styled was because once the Duke
• 5:38
  of Edinburgh visited Longbridge, after they'd looked at all the cars, duke of
• 5:42
  Edinburg in his usual kind of rude way, said, but do they have to be so ugly?
• 5:48
  Yeah.
• 5:49
  Least he wasn't saying it to a person this time.
• 5:54
  Dude, there's only one.
• 5:56
  Jerry Marshall.
• 5:58
  Do you know that name?
• 5:59
  If you don't know the name, Google him up.
• 6:02
  The Carl's Big Bertha and baby Bertha.
• 6:06
  This is dealer team Voxel.
• 6:09
  Believe it was run by a Swedish chap called Bill Bliden.
• 6:13
  Stein.
• 6:13
  All of these names are worth Googling out.
• 6:15
  He was like a kind of a, not quite Shelby, more of a yen,
• 6:19
  coy kind of tery kind of guy.
• 6:22
  But either way, Ford were Eaton GM's lunch, weren't they?
• 6:26
  And and so dealer team vaw works, GM come with these two cars.
• 6:33
  Big Bertha is a Voxel Ventura with, I think a Chevy big block,
• 6:40
  but I'm not completely sure.
• 6:42
  It might be a small block.
• 6:44
  Baby Bertha was the one that was really good and this was a voxel forenza.
• 6:49
  And the Forenza and the Voxel Magnum, they were like a sort of European Pontiac.
• 6:54
  They had like Pontiac styling cues all over them.
• 6:58
  And then for the hot rod racy ones, the Magnum, which had like a quad
• 7:03
  headlight nose and a Pontiac like beak, it had this drop snoot put on
• 7:08
  it, and it became the Vox off phn.
• 7:12
  I mean, the road cars only had two liters or something like that, but Baby
• 7:15
  Bertha kind of looked like a forenza, but then had some other crazy motor in it.
• 7:20
  And if you look at footage of Jerry Marshall driving these
• 7:25
  cars, my God, it's impressive.
• 7:28
  He was big ginger and drank a shit ton of.
• 7:32
  There's a video, there's a film online, like there's only one Jerry Marshall,
• 7:37
  and it is so seventies horrific.
• 7:40
  You can smell the cigarette smoke and the booze coming off the screen.
• 7:45
  It's really, his friends aren't actually that different profile side
• 7:48
  on to the, uh, an escort mark one.
• 7:51
  Are they.
• 7:51
  Well, of course they are.
• 7:52
  The, uh, the forenza was, uh, voxels answer to, yeah, you know, escort
• 7:58
  Mexico and they were the same size car because the PHNs like a coupe
• 8:04
  version of, is it the Veeva hc?
• 8:07
  There were three Voxel Vivas, the H-A-H-B-H, and if you're
• 8:12
  a European car guy, the Voxel Viva was the small GM product.
• 8:19
  It was like, oh, like an Opal Cadet.
• 8:21
  I think Cadet was the brand.
• 8:22
  Well, I, it was Cadet was a brand name that they used in Germany at that time.
• 8:27
  Apparently.
• 8:28
  He also, he also won the 71 Escort Mexico Jam Major.
• 8:31
  Beating Jody Schechter.
• 8:33
  Yeah.
• 8:33
  Well that was when Old Schechter was first in Europe from South Africa.
• 8:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:40
  And kind of proving himself, but you know, Schechter, you met him personally.
• 8:46
  Well, no is a strong word, I think in the circumstances.
• 8:49
  Well, you did this with him.
• 8:51
  Yeah, yeah, I did, but I did some, I, I sold him some stuff for his,
• 8:54
  his office down in, um, Hampshire.
• 8:57
  They've got a, he's got an estate down there.
• 8:59
  I had a look at his car.
• 9:00
  He took me out to have a look at his cars in the garage.
• 9:02
  He's got some of his old F1 cars there and stuff, and signed my Ferrari book.
• 9:06
  Nice enough bloke blunt, I think is, uh, the way to describe him.
• 9:10
  If you read the stuff about him, I think you got him and, uh, he must
• 9:14
  have liked you to be nice to you and take time to sign your book and only
• 9:18
  be like South African blunt because in his racing career, he was beyond.
• 9:24
  Blunt.
• 9:24
  He was really like, you know, he made a statement in the way that he, uh, he
• 9:29
  drove a bit of a crasher, but I mean, he became world champion for Ferrari.
• 9:38
  The next thing I've got written down here is Capris and Rovers.
• 9:42
  Yep.
• 9:43
  'cause this is the era where the BTCC comes onto grandstand.
• 9:49
  ABC's wide worlds of sport.
• 9:51
  Americans are very familiar with this show.
• 9:54
  This show introduce motorsport to people.
• 9:57
  Will grandstand on a Saturday afternoon on British tv.
• 10:02
  And World of Sport.
• 10:04
  That was the ITV version of it.
• 10:06
  They were the only two channels that, well, it was BBC two, but they only showed
• 10:10
  like sophisticated programming, Des Leham and Dickie Davis, baby Des and Dickie.
• 10:15
  I met Dickie Davis once.
• 10:17
  Cool.
• 10:18
  Google him up.
• 10:19
  He's really an amusing character, but I met him at Handy Cross Swimming Center
• 10:24
  in High Wickham before I met you.
• 10:26
  I must have been like eight or nine, but he was at the pool.
• 10:29
  And we were all like swimming.
• 10:30
  And he came along, he had a shiny turquoise tracksuit on and I remember
• 10:35
  when he shook hands with us, he was just as smarmy in real life as he was on tv.
• 10:40
  Yeah.
• 10:40
  Good.
• 10:40
  So we miss your chicky Dicky Davis, don't we?
• 10:43
  We do, but look right, this is relevant to the BTCC because between
• 10:47
  like three 15 from Lingfield and the four 30 from Newbury horse
• 10:53
  racing, big sport in England.
• 10:56
  Gambling.
• 10:57
  It's gambling that drives it.
• 10:59
  There's legal betting in England.
• 11:00
  You know, there's betting shops that you can go in on the high street in town, like
• 11:05
  next to the tab tobacconist or whatever.
• 11:07
  So horse racing's a big deal in, in England and people like my granddad
• 11:12
  used to be like tuning in for the three 15 to Lingfield because you
• 11:16
  know, they had a tenor riding on, you know, one of the horses kind of thing.
• 11:21
  Well, well, the BBC would like to like put others content in between and,
• 11:27
  and so Rally Cross was part of that.
• 11:30
  Rally Cross is like where you drive a bit on the track and a bit on the dirt and
• 11:34
  it's jumping around and in the mud and, you know, rally Cross was designed for tv.
• 11:39
  Yeah, it's brilliant.
• 11:40
  I think by the late seventies, early eighties, by the era
• 11:44
  of Capris and and rovers.
• 11:47
  The rovers, these were SD ones, but these were SD ones with the
• 11:51
  fuel injected version of the olds.
• 11:55
  It's not the old, the little Buick two 15 that Buick sold
• 11:59
  to Rover in the early sixties.
• 12:01
  'cause they didn't have much purpose for it.
• 12:02
  Well, by or by their late seventies, early eighties bl were fuel injecting it.
• 12:08
  So this is the rover Vitas that you'll remember the police using ga. Mm-hmm.
• 12:11
  135 mile an hour car in stock form.
• 12:15
  I remember the, the shtick with them now is, some of them
• 12:17
  are twin planum or something.
• 12:19
  That's what drives the value of them.
• 12:21
  The twin plenum ones are worth more than the non twin plenum ones, and
• 12:25
  it seems to me it's like four cam, 2 7, 5 GT Bs and two cam ones.
• 12:29
  It's like well just have the two count.
• 12:32
  One is cheaper.
• 12:32
  It's gonna be easier to maintain.
• 12:34
  Have the one that hasn't rusted to bits is probably the best advice.
• 12:37
  With those Rover SD ones.
• 12:39
  Yeah, completely.
• 12:40
  But Ro versus Capris, that was pretty good racing, wasn't it?
• 12:43
  They both had eight four.
• 12:44
  Andy Rouse won the championship in a rover vi Tes having previously won it the
• 12:49
  previous year in an alpha Romeo GTV six.
• 12:52
  Oh wow.
• 12:53
  Yeah.
• 12:53
  I'd forgotten about those.
• 12:54
  GTV sixes.
• 12:56
  Uh, yeah.
• 12:56
  Yeah.
• 12:56
  Well, I mean, dude, like I, I'd forgotten in 80 and 81 'cause I wasn't
• 13:00
  watching it 'cause I was too small.
• 13:02
  Win.
• 13:02
  Percy was picking up the title in Rx Sevens.
• 13:05
  Oh wow.
• 13:06
  Wow.
• 13:06
  He then won again in 82 in a Corolla, slightly less.
• 13:10
  Wow.
• 13:10
  Yeah, but none of those, I mean, still an impressive feat.
• 13:17
  That covers the early period, doesn't it?
• 13:20
  So that's before we tuned in.
• 13:22
  So now I'm gonna come at you with, that was by way of intro and positioning.
• 13:26
  Almost.
• 13:27
  Now I'm gonna come at you with the, what's your earliest memory of BTCC?
• 13:31
  It must've been on the couch watching grandstand, right?
• 13:35
  Yeah, of course.
• 13:36
  What would the cars racing, who were the drivers?
• 13:38
  What do you remember?
• 13:39
  I mean, the earliest I was probably watching, it would've
• 13:41
  been late eighties, early nineties.
• 13:43
  So M threes, Sierras and m threes.
• 13:46
  M threes, yeah, exactly.
• 13:47
  M threes and, and Sierras.
• 13:49
  And, and to be clear on this guys, so this is the three door Sierra
• 13:52
  Cosworth with the big wing on it.
• 13:54
  Yeah.
• 13:55
  Texaco all the bats.
• 13:57
  Sponsorship, the drivers.
• 13:58
  Andy Rouse, Rob grt.
• 14:01
  Yep.
• 14:01
  The BMW's first generation M threes.
• 14:05
  E thirties.
• 14:05
  E. Yeah.
• 14:06
  Yeah.
• 14:06
  M threes down on power next to the Sierras.
• 14:10
  So on a circuit like Silverstone, they weren't winning.
• 14:12
  But on a circuit like brands, ooh, they maybe could drivers James Weaver
• 14:18
  and Frank Siter, they're the two that immediately come into my mind.
• 14:23
  Will Hoy, oh, Steve Sopa, I, I believe your man Sopa was, was around in
• 14:29
  the M threes at, at at that time.
• 14:31
  So that was, was, I remember seeing it on TV at that time.
• 14:35
  And I, I wanna mention another important element there, which is Murray Walker.
• 14:41
  Oh mate, because Murray was important, wasn't he?
• 14:44
  Murray made it sound like you were watching Formula One.
• 14:47
  'cause Murray was the voice of Formula One and he was so excitable and the cars
• 14:52
  were crashing left, right, and center.
• 14:55
  I think that's, that's the key.
• 14:56
  Yeah.
• 14:57
  You know, let's be fair, Murray would get excited about al boring shit because
• 15:02
  the guy had to make Formula One exciting.
• 15:04
  Yeah, and like, you know, there might be a couple of good
• 15:06
  overtakes in the whole race.
• 15:08
  Well, that isn't BTCC, to be fair.
• 15:10
  Also, the F1 race would be like an hour and a half long, or sometimes
• 15:13
  a bit shorter if it's monza.
• 15:15
  Sometimes longer if it's raining.
• 15:16
  But touring cars, no, none of that.
• 15:19
  There was fairing rubbing, there was sparks off, like chin spoilers
• 15:23
  hitting the deck and being driven over.
• 15:25
  There was all that sort of stuff.
• 15:27
  See, there's your NASCAR parallel.
• 15:29
  It is like nascar rubbing is racing in BTC.
• 15:32
  Yeah.
• 15:33
  Rubbing, it's definitely racing.
• 15:34
  There's plenty of that.
• 15:35
  And of course the cars were robust enough that, you know, one little
• 15:38
  twang with, you know, with the barrier and probably carrying on, you know?
• 15:42
  Yeah.
• 15:42
  Well of course that was part of what killed it in the end, wasn't
• 15:44
  it, was when the arrow came.
• 15:46
  Any little GY bargy, and your car was fucked for the rest of the race, whereas
• 15:50
  in the early days, they were exactly like your company cars in that you
• 15:54
  could crash 'em up a curb and it was still drivable afterwards, you know?
• 15:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 15:59
  And especially if it was rainy, they'd come in, change tires,
• 16:01
  and the mechanic would be beating the panels out with a hammer and
• 16:04
  stuff, or pulling bits off the car.
• 16:06
  Yeah.
• 16:06
  So as you know very if Yeah, exactly.
• 16:09
  Well, exactly.
• 16:10
  And if you are like a teenager or uh, a bit older or a bit
• 16:12
  old, it's great fun to watch.
• 16:14
  You know, it is, it's quicker hit racing and of course these days there's a couple
• 16:17
  of races, I can't remember if they were always a couple of races or not, but I
• 16:21
  mean you'd get cracked racing on some really good circuits that formula me
• 16:24
  to one guy go to 'cause they're too fast and it would be too dangerous.
• 16:27
  Talk about the circuits a little bit 'cause we were gonna do an episode
• 16:30
  talking about British club circuits.
• 16:32
  Let's talk a little bit about club circuits that we know quite well.
• 16:37
  'cause guys, the next step with the BTCC is the two liter 8,000 RPM rev
• 16:43
  limit formula, which is the period that we remember very well where
• 16:48
  basically the cars racing looked like the cars in our company carpool.
• 16:52
  So when the Nissan Primera did well, when you.
• 16:55
  Got given and Nissan Primera as a pool car and then it revved like the devil
• 16:59
  and went round corners really well.
• 17:01
  You really did believe there was a, not a like win on Sunday, sell on Monday
• 17:06
  kind of thing, but you really did feel like the products actually reflected
• 17:11
  the ethos of the racing, didn't they?
• 17:14
  And uh, you know, it's, it's like my Pontiac with the eight lug
• 17:17
  wheels that they developed because wheels kept falling off the NASCARs.
• 17:20
  It had that kind of thing going on for it at, yeah, definitely.
• 17:25
  Club circuits.
• 17:26
  What's your favorite club circuit in Britain to to drive on?
• 17:30
  'cause all of these club circuits, guys, the BTCC would
• 17:33
  visit each of them sometimes.
• 17:35
  I think some years, multiple times.
• 17:37
  Like in the same year.
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:39
  And a circuit like Silverstone wouldn't necessarily be the Grand Prix circuit.
• 17:44
  They used to just use a limited version of Silverstone called the club circuit.
• 17:48
  There was basically just a triangle, you know, you do the old start, finish
• 17:51
  cops, then up to maggots, but then at maggots, instead of it being a left,
• 17:56
  you'd do a right, drive down the main runway, that was the main straight,
• 18:00
  and then come straight to Woodcote.
• 18:02
  So it was a bit of a Yeah, it's the same at Brands Hatch.
• 18:04
  You've got brands Hatch Indie, haven't you?
• 18:06
  So that you, yeah, you do the, the chica, the hairpin come down the hill,
• 18:10
  hang a left, and then you wouldn't turn left to go off up towards
• 18:13
  the, uh, the back fast section up past the, um, the sweeping turns.
• 18:17
  You'd just go off and around the big loop and back on the staff finish.
• 18:20
  But, so if I, if I think about circuits, the, the, you know, as a listener, you
• 18:25
  should Google up and watch an onboard lap of, if you don't know brands.
• 18:30
  The undulation change is unbelievable, right?
• 18:33
  I know most British club circuits are meant to be like airfield circuits
• 18:36
  and flat, and we'll talk about those as well, but there's plenty
• 18:40
  of British circuits isn't there with really great surface change.
• 18:43
  So with brands, there's that massive undulation.
• 18:46
  Another one Undulates a lot is Ton Park.
• 18:50
  Yeah.
• 18:51
  Cadwell is the one where on a bike you can get air.
• 18:55
  In fact, it's hard not to get air.
• 18:56
  The mountain.
• 18:58
  The mountain, yeah.
• 18:59
  Yeah.
• 18:59
  Um, and that's worth Googling up if, if you like put in BSB British Super
• 19:03
  Bikes and jumps over the mountain or Cadwell Park, and you'll see bikes
• 19:09
  with the back wheel 18 inches off the floor and the front wheel of
• 19:11
  like four or five feet off the floor.
• 19:13
  It's ridiculous.
• 19:14
  Viewers will know serin 'cause the name's memorable.
• 19:18
  Yeah.
• 19:18
  But if you look at serin, serin is flat and really windy and, and there's
• 19:23
  a long straight, and the other one that I think about in the same context
• 19:27
  as Serin, that always felt really like kind of rough at the edges.
• 19:31
  A bit of a North Wil wilkesboro was Knock Hill that went up in Scotland.
• 19:35
  They go to Pembury, they do Donington Park and Donington Park has that, you know,
• 19:40
  left, right suite where Sena made that.
• 19:43
  Awesome.
• 19:44
  Arguably, you know, the pass of his career, the pass of Formula One, you
• 19:48
  know, they do donnington as as well.
• 19:50
  They do a shorter version of the Donnington circuit, wouldn't they?
• 19:53
  Yeah, they'd lose the last little bit, but like, um, Thruxton as well.
• 19:57
  Oh yeah.
• 19:58
  Yeah.
• 19:59
  I mean that's probably the one I've driven the most.
• 20:00
  I did a track day at Thruxton.
• 20:02
  First time I ever drove a Ferrari and I got under steer, uh, over a hundred
• 20:06
  miles an hour in this 360 through church.
• 20:10
  So church, church is scary.
• 20:12
  Yeah.
• 20:12
  And there are lot, I took the three 50 through there at like,
• 20:15
  just, I mean, between 90 and 95, probably near a 92 be told.
• 20:20
  And it is scary to keep your foot.
• 20:22
  I mean, you've pre set it up right.
• 20:24
  But it's a long grass runoff.
• 20:26
  It's almost like, uh, what's it called?
• 20:27
  That one at spa, that's the lefthander towards the end of the lap where
• 20:32
  you basically like lift and turn in, but all you can see is the trees.
• 20:36
  So you're like turning into, not quite a blind turn, but a much shut
• 20:39
  up, you know, a turn that you can't see through, and you are turning in
• 20:43
  with the car borderline rang out.
• 20:45
  Like even in a fiesta st you're doing like a buck 20.
• 20:48
  Yeah, no, that is, that is fairly scary on the way down to the bus stop.
• 20:51
  Yeah.
• 20:52
  I mean, the one I've driven the most is, is.
• 20:53
  Thaxton, I guess.
• 20:55
  And I do like it because although it's fairly flat, you don't get a huge
• 21:00
  amount of elevation change and that, you know, he's, he's not brilliant
• 21:02
  for it, as we've discussed before.
• 21:04
  It's apparently, unless it's been resurfaced pretty sandpapery.
• 21:07
  So be careful if you're doing it in a bike in leathers.
• 21:10
  But in a car, I mean, church in the back sections up towards church are
• 21:15
  some fast sweepers that you sort of just have to know the track's gonna
• 21:18
  be there and just turn it in and it, it is there every lap, which is nice.
• 21:21
  Um, but still, you don't know it's gonna be there.
• 21:25
  It's not like the cork screw, right, the cork shoe's.
• 21:26
  All technical.
• 21:28
  Yeah.
• 21:28
  Where you have to like pick a point to turn in and, and all of that.
• 21:31
  The British Club circuits, they're more like, I've been playing Goodwood
• 21:34
  a lot on Grand Tomo, and, and the more I play it, the harder I find St.
• 21:40
  Mary's, particularly that first corner that is a difficult corner.
• 21:44
  It's like the first turn at Suzuka.
• 21:46
  It's like a double apex kind of a guy, but it's off Canberra.
• 21:50
  And it sort of gets the car loose before there's the main part of the turn.
• 21:55
  It's really, uh, the harder I try the crapper I am.
• 21:59
  It's, I mean, I've not driven Goodwood, so I mean, obviously I know the circuit
• 22:03
  well, but yeah, that first turning is a, is really sort of two turnings.
• 22:07
  That you sort of have to thread together and you can sort of see that in how the
• 22:10
  cars are set up and shimmying and stuff as they go through the first part of it.
• 22:14
  And then it's how early can you get on the power to get on that sort of front, little
• 22:18
  straightaway down to the next turning.
• 22:19
  Yeah.
• 22:20
  Um, so I, I mean, I like thruxton.
• 22:22
  Brands Hatch.
• 22:23
  Even the brands Hatch indie circuit that we did, when I test those, those,
• 22:26
  um, I 30 Ns when they came out is good fun because you're right, coming down
• 22:31
  the main straight and then into that righthander where it just falls away.
• 22:34
  On the outside you've got, is it Padac?
• 22:36
  Yeah.
• 22:37
  Is that what that corner's called Padac kill Ben?
• 22:39
  I think so.
• 22:40
  And you, but you, again, you could be doing quite a speed even having
• 22:43
  come onto it from the short bit onto that back straight and then it just
• 22:46
  sort of like falls away from you.
• 22:47
  So you know, you have to get your, if.
• 22:49
  In the rain, I imagine it's terrifying.
• 22:51
  I didn't do it in the rain because if you turn that, you know, turn
• 22:54
  in and it doesn't bite, first time, you're gonna run wide and it's
• 22:59
  not a massively wide sand trap.
• 23:00
  And then the fence and you know, if you don't, aren't fully committed, you're
• 23:04
  gonna lose too much time coming round there and you're then going into a hairpin
• 23:07
  where someone can stuff it up the inside.
• 23:09
  So.
• 23:09
  The nice thing with that hair is 'cause it's uphill, you've got quite a bit
• 23:12
  of grip on it, so you can roll into it pretty quick even though it's quite tight.
• 23:16
  So I, it's since, as we're talking about Padac Kill Bend and we're talking about
• 23:19
  the BTCC, I should mention that Epic save that Jason Plato makes in that Xi
• 23:27
  little Chevrolet through Padac Keel Bend.
• 23:29
  And I'm gonna add a clip to it.
• 23:31
  If you've not seen it before, it is borderline the greatest save of all time.
• 23:36
  And I, I suppose it, we ought to be said at this point that, you know
• 23:38
  you between if we've driven a lot of these circuits, but not all of
• 23:41
  them because there's a lot of 'em.
• 23:42
  You know, there were a lot of these little nary ass circuits around the UK and not
• 23:47
  kills a fair old way up to Scotland and there are others in the north of England.
• 23:50
  Donnington is a fair old way up.
• 23:52
  I mean, I've done that on a motorbike and stuff and it was pretty cool.
• 23:55
  I mean, really cool.
• 23:55
  I really enjoyed it.
• 23:56
  But you know, again, you're conscious how slow you are because
• 24:00
  although it's not very wide.
• 24:02
  I mean, the, the actual track itself isn't very wide.
• 24:05
  You can still go swing from one side to the other, and especially on a bike, if
• 24:08
  you are committed enough, you can take a lot of corner speed to those apexes.
• 24:11
  So that's a great insight because that's the case with what we're
• 24:15
  saying is these are narrow tracks.
• 24:17
  Yeah.
• 24:17
  So passing in, uh, European sized car.
• 24:22
  Like Fourth Sierra or, uh, voxel.
• 24:25
  Vectra, you know, you've got two of them alongside each other.
• 24:28
  There isn't room for a third one on the, on the track, right?
• 24:31
  No.
• 24:31
  It's touring cars.
• 24:32
  So someone's gonna try and put it there if there's a fag paper
• 24:34
  of size gap in between it.
• 24:35
  Yeah.
• 24:36
  And like for anyone who hasn't seen Gabrieli Tarquini in his 1 5, 5.
• 24:41
  Then go and have a little look on, on your, on your YouTubes again.
• 24:45
  Yeah, that manual cycling rating.
• 24:47
  I have a section at the end where if there are particular incidents that
• 24:53
  we've not mentioned as we've been talking on the call, we should highlight this.
• 24:58
  And Tar Queeny on two wheels in the Alpha 1 5 5 was fully, uh, was fully, yes.
• 25:05
  So this was what tour cars was like in this nineties.
• 25:09
  A former Formula One driver coming to a domestic series on club
• 25:15
  circuits, airfield club circuits, but where the people building the
• 25:20
  cars were like Formula One teams.
• 25:23
  Yeah.
• 25:23
  Building the cars.
• 25:24
  So this alpha that Tarweed had, I don't know who had built it or anything
• 25:30
  like that, but it was a shit ton better than what any anyone else had.
• 25:34
  But yeah, they would drive them absolutely.
• 25:37
  Like they stole them and it was a contact sport.
• 25:40
  Yeah.
• 25:41
  So yeah, there's this awesome picture of tarquini.
• 25:45
  Well, rolling it isn't it?
• 25:46
  There's, it's fully like upside down.
• 25:48
  He like end over ended it completely, didn't he?
• 25:51
  There's a photo of him on, on two wheels, but he did the complete end over end.
• 25:55
  And in fact, so whilst we're talking about this, let's do
• 25:57
  another moment in the sport.
• 25:59
  Do you remember when Nigel Mansell.
• 26:02
  Raced to Ford Mod at Donington.
• 26:05
  Yeah.
• 26:05
  Do you remember the wreck that he had?
• 26:07
  Yeah.
• 26:08
  Although didn't he raise, he He came from last of first in one of the races.
• 26:12
  Yeah.
• 26:12
  I mean in the rain.
• 26:14
  Yes.
• 26:14
  Yeah, so that's the point, isn't it?
• 26:17
  The IT produced Epic Motor Sport drama.
• 26:20
  The.
• 26:21
  You really saw that somebody like Nigel Mansel came and really tried.
• 26:26
  It was like win or crash for these F1 drivers who came to do one drive.
• 26:31
  And it was awesome as a, I mean, it was just a win-win win, wasn't it?
• 26:35
  Because, you know, as a spec you loved it.
• 26:38
  Uh, the sponsors absolutely loved it.
• 26:40
  Probably the only people who didn't like it were the other drivers who were in
• 26:43
  the series all the time and were being pushed out of the way by a Formula One
• 26:48
  driver who didn't give a shit about.
• 26:50
  Points or cost of the car or, or or anything like that?
• 26:53
  Yeah, I mean, it's happened, it happened at other times, isn't it?
• 26:55
  I guess in motor GP when they're like replacing a driver and stuff
• 26:58
  here and there back in the day.
• 27:00
  But like I was gonna say, I got distracted.
• 27:02
  It does better.
• 27:02
  In, uh, talking about briefly, the Toka touring car for the PlayStation.
• 27:07
  Taught me all of these circuits.
• 27:09
  You know, I'd seen 'em on tv, but you wanna drive them Toka Touring Car is
• 27:12
  your edge, but you can still get it.
• 27:14
  I looked it up.
• 27:14
  You can buy the Goodbye the old game and the reviews of it are good.
• 27:18
  Now I can give you a personal review.
• 27:20
  Having driven it for probably, I don't know, 50 to a hundred hours
• 27:23
  with Dens and you sitting around on the sofa playing those, those
• 27:27
  games notable for a bunch of things.
• 27:29
  One, it had damage on the cars.
• 27:31
  So let's contextualize that a little bit.
• 27:33
  So after the Sierra M three era, the rules that came in, it was a two liter
• 27:40
  formula with a rev limit of eight grand.
• 27:43
  Yeah.
• 27:44
  And, and this is the formula, you know, throughout the nineties,
• 27:47
  this was the formula that held, and the cars evolved a little bit and
• 27:51
  they certainly evolved from being.
• 27:53
  Further away from road cars, but the circuits were pretty
• 27:58
  consistent at this time.
• 27:59
  You know, the, the, and, and what you saw through this period was
• 28:04
  increasing manufacturer involvement.
• 28:07
  So we were talking at the peak, you know, a dozen manufacturers being involved.
• 28:12
  There was a sense that if you weren't involved, what were you doing?
• 28:16
  It wasn't like in NASCAR where there's only like three makers.
• 28:20
  It's, it's, it, it, it was.
• 28:21
  Literally, there were a dozen car makers all with works entries.
• 28:26
  What were works entries, but they weren't really works entries.
• 28:30
  What it was, was there was a, a dealer who was building and
• 28:34
  racing the cars themselves.
• 28:37
  Typically, to give you a flavor of this, 92, from 92 through till 2000, the
• 28:42
  manufacturer winners were B-M-W-B-M-W, alpha, Romeo, voxel, Audi, Reno,
• 28:48
  Volvo, Nissan, Ford, and Vaw again.
• 28:51
  I mean, that's what, seven different manufacturers in a row.
• 28:54
  So you know, it, it was, it was cracking.
• 28:56
  There was, there was, there was money in it and it was on tv.
• 28:59
  I remember feeling as a spectacle on tv.
• 29:02
  It was better than Formula One.
• 29:04
  I remember feeling almost, I was betraying Formula One by feeling like that.
• 29:08
  'cause whilst Formula One was more pure, the RG barge that was then over
• 29:13
  after 20 minutes, it was better racing.
• 29:15
  There's no argument it was better racing.
• 29:17
  Just flat out can't, it can't not be, I mean it's like a sort of.
• 29:20
  Yeah, it's a sort of crack hit, isn't it, in terms of, uh, impact.
• 29:23
  That's how it felt in comparison to Formula One.
• 29:25
  Oh, it would?
• 29:26
  Yeah.
• 29:26
  Yeah, so the game was a big part of that.
• 29:29
  I headed you off just then when you were gonna talk about the game.
• 29:32
  No, no.
• 29:32
  It's cool.
• 29:33
  Yeah.
• 29:33
  I, I really wanted you to, to talk about the game because I feel like that's
• 29:37
  part of the appeal was that, that the sport was already gamified, right?
• 29:43
  It already was lots of pushing and shoving and a short format and.
• 29:48
  Lots of drama, lots of visual drama.
• 29:51
  The game, I mean, I don't know how good the graphics would look to be now.
• 29:55
  It was a PlayStation one.
• 29:56
  It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't.
• 29:57
  Before that, you know, it was all right.
• 29:59
  You, you'd be, you could tell the V more from the Pergo, right?
• 30:02
  Oh yeah.
• 30:03
  The cars all look representative.
• 30:04
  'cause of course they've all got the deliveries on them.
• 30:06
  It was a manufacturer sponsored game.
• 30:08
  It was Toka touring cars, not V Rally or any of that stuff.
• 30:11
  So all the deliveries were correct.
• 30:12
  So you know, you add Caliber on the back of the Reno, you
• 30:16
  know, all that sort of stuff.
• 30:17
  You know, all our menu's.
• 30:18
  Yellow Laguna was on the front cover.
• 30:21
  It was hard.
• 30:22
  Yeah.
• 30:22
  I mean it had weather effects properly on there, and I'm telling you, taking
• 30:26
  church and those sweeping curves at the back of Thruxton in the rain on expert,
• 30:31
  when you need those points from that round to carry on in the championship,
• 30:36
  I mean, that was hard because they don't mind giving you a little nudge.
• 30:39
  And a little nudge of that speed would send you into a massive four
• 30:42
  wheel tailspin off across the grass and lose you 15 seconds, you know,
• 30:46
  if it didn't wreck the car, you know that, and that would happen a lot.
• 30:49
  I remember one of the reviews I read, uh, at the time said you could argue that
• 30:54
  it was pretty well coded because John Cleen drove like a bear with a sore head,
• 30:58
  which they, they felt was representative of how he drove in the championship.
• 31:03
  That guy raced voxels, but sold Volvos.
• 31:07
  At his dealership in Scotland.
• 31:09
  I don't really understand how that figured out.
• 31:11
  I actually had a little backwards and forwards with him once back in the, in
• 31:16
  the days of Twitter, I can't even remember what it was about, but I remember feeling
• 31:20
  like, whoa, I like touched a celebrity.
• 31:22
  And I also felt kind of, 'cause I didn't like him in period, I,
• 31:26
  I was a Soaper guy, Steve Soper.
• 31:29
  You know, I like the Fords.
• 31:31
  So Cleland was generally the, the villain to be, uh, to be pushed aside.
• 31:36
  That was a works entry.
• 31:37
  I mean, Lord knows what the kung fu around that car.
• 31:41
  Was it raced in dealer team?
• 31:43
  White?
• 31:44
  He raced Cavaliers and, and then Vous, wasn't it?
• 31:47
  Hmm.
• 31:48
  But the other thing to note about it.
• 31:50
  And I've forgotten.
• 31:50
  This is Tiff Dell did the commentary on the game.
• 31:54
  Oh, we do.
• 31:55
  That's a lot.
• 31:56
  'cause I mean, or there's not a lot of commentary, you
• 31:58
  know, and you'll be the same.
• 31:59
  I mean, you can wait for him to say it kind of thing.
• 32:01
  Commentary that you get used to, but you know, it's still Tiff Dell, I mean, which
• 32:06
  is pretty cool because Tiff's a cool guy.
• 32:08
  It's sold 600,000 copies it seems here in the first six months of release, which
• 32:12
  tells you that the game, uh, was a well reviewed and that the series was popular.
• 32:16
  Racing games always are.
• 32:17
  But the fact that it had car damage that did affect performance, the fact
• 32:21
  that you could actually go on board, so you could sit in car as well and
• 32:25
  you could change the perspective.
• 32:26
  So you could see like the steering wheel and out the window and stuff
• 32:29
  with rain effects on the window.
• 32:31
  I always felt that was giving yourself needless handicaps.
• 32:34
  Could you do that in grand charisma at that time?
• 32:36
  Uh, probably.
• 32:37
  I think Grant Ismo is later.
• 32:38
  I'd have to check when the first GT entry, um, is interesting that, because
• 32:42
  that's probably why I remember the Toka game because I, I wanted us to talk about
• 32:47
  the, to game on this pod because I, I feel like it illustrates how really for
• 32:52
  the past 30 years, games have influenced the sport and the sport has influenced
• 32:57
  games, and there's been this sort of.
• 32:59
  You know, we need to lean into this continual feedback loop.
• 33:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:03
  There is, because the, the reason that we got in the car to drive to the circuits,
• 33:09
  to watch the actual races often in the rain was because the game was cool.
• 33:15
  You know, you and Dan, like the game I'd have gone anyway.
• 33:17
  I'd have gone to see any merger racing.
• 33:19
  But you two liked the game.
• 33:22
  So there was the game made, the real thing come alive.
• 33:25
  I, I've just checked, I, I was right.
• 33:28
  Toka was out in 96.
• 33:29
  GT one wasn't out to 97.
• 33:31
  Yes, you could go on board, but I dunno that you could go on board and, and I
• 33:35
  hadn't seen it in other games before Toka.
• 33:37
  Um, so the damage was good and like, you know, later games didn't
• 33:41
  have damage, GT didn't have damage.
• 33:47
  So the tracks, what is your favorite club circuit in Britain then?
• 33:50
  Or if not a favorite circuit, a favorite corner of section?
• 33:53
  Oh, well, um, look, I think if I'm gonna go with a favorite
• 33:56
  circuit, let's go with Ton.
• 33:58
  'cause I've driven it the most and I can say it's, I, I really like that circuit.
• 34:01
  It's a good circuit.
• 34:02
  There's not many bits that I are like rubbish.
• 34:03
  I do, I did like Croft on the game of not driven it in real life.
• 34:07
  Maybe Croft was the one that I was thinking of as like Knock Hill,
• 34:10
  because candle park's pretty good.
• 34:13
  It like always looks like the grass needs to be mowed better and the
• 34:16
  grandstand looks like it's kind of, I mean, they may have face lifted it.
• 34:19
  Now I. If I'm driving there, the grass is getting mowed by me going offline and
• 34:23
  speaking it all up in front of the car.
• 34:27
  Um, but yeah, I mean, there, there's loads of them, isn't there?
• 34:30
  Uh, um, so, you know, the ones you, Dr. The ones you like the most probably are
• 34:33
  the ones you end up driving the most, I guess often the ones that are nearest you.
• 34:39
  Do you have a favorite car from the B-T-C-C-I?
• 34:43
  I have to say I quite like menus Laguna.
• 34:46
  Didn't it have a Cafe 37 Green as well?
• 34:49
  Yeah.
• 34:49
  Yeah.
• 34:49
  There was a Blend 37 Laguna Google up the Blend 37 Reno Laguna, because that was the
• 34:56
  one that came with the Oz alloys on it.
• 34:59
  I personally liked the British Racing Green.
• 35:02
  That's the era where they were allowing them to make some modification to them.
• 35:06
  So it has kind of too much arrow on it for the racing really
• 35:10
  to be as good as it had been.
• 35:11
  But it is such a great looking car.
• 35:14
  Oh man, it is.
• 35:15
  And look, we both own Laguna.
• 35:17
  They were fun.
• 35:18
  I'd forgotten that.
• 35:19
  Yeah, you had a, a pool one.
• 35:22
  Yeah, that was bassy.
• 35:23
  And I will never forget the way that guys round mini roundabouts
• 35:28
  in England, if you're gonna, you turn in right off the roundabout.
• 35:32
  So what you're gonna do is slow down, make sure it's clear, and then drive
• 35:36
  270 degrees around the roundabout.
• 35:39
  Or you could do at the Mark Gamy way, which is arrive, look right
• 35:42
  through the turn to the right.
• 35:44
  Perceive nobody's coming.
• 35:46
  Pitch the car into a giant slide using the hand brake, and then with it
• 35:52
  bouncing off the roof fucking valve.
• 35:54
  Float with the front tire smoking, launch it off the corner.
• 35:59
  My God, I had done that corner quite a lot to be fair.
• 36:08
  I had a silver lagoona three liter with the 24 valve in it.
• 36:11
  So rare you could get 'em with the OZ wheels.
• 36:15
  Mine didn't have the OZ wheels.
• 36:17
  I just remember the, the standard company car at the one that I, at
• 36:21
  the company I was at at the time was like the BMW 3, 2, 3, 3, 2 5.
• 36:25
  That's what everybody was buying, and I remember.
• 36:28
  One time following this top sales guy who had like a new 3, 2, 5 onto
• 36:33
  the M four and down the on ramp.
• 36:35
  He rang it out and I was right on the back bumper and as we got onto
• 36:39
  the highway, I just passed him.
• 36:41
  And the following day in the office, he was like, what the fuck that Reno?
• 36:44
  What the fuck?
• 36:45
  I thought I was just Reno.
• 36:47
  This is something wrong with my BMW.
• 36:49
  I was like, yeah, what's wrong is you not looking?
• 36:52
  'cause you made me realize that it was worth pouring over the performance
• 36:57
  figures in the back of the magazines because you just got more car.
• 37:00
  So that Laguna had like a buck 92 horse.
• 37:04
  Yeah.
• 37:04
  And it revved better than the BMW was as well.
• 37:07
  'cause I'd driven BMW pool cars.
• 37:09
  So it's a bit heavy at the front, wasn't it?
• 37:11
  It was fucking terrible on the corners and, and looking
• 37:14
  back, it wasn't that nice.
• 37:16
  I mean, Eric, the producer jokes about my under steer, right?
• 37:19
  And we were actually talking about it when we were in Florida recently.
• 37:23
  And he thinks I pinch off the line and it means that I like dive for the apex.
• 37:27
  I pinch off the line, dive for the apex, and then have to do
• 37:31
  all the cornering on the exit.
• 37:33
  And it's interesting, he said, you need the car to take a set and.
• 37:36
  Of course, it's like the bike, what you need to do every and in a rear
• 37:40
  wheel drive car, you need to, it needs to be exactly like a bike.
• 37:43
  You need to be in the throttle smoothly all the way through the turn.
• 37:47
  And I've, I think I've kind of have forgotten that, but the lagoon
• 37:51
  of particularly, you know, as a front heavy front world drive
• 37:54
  car, there was none of that.
• 37:56
  It was all about the, you know, just scrub the speed off.
• 37:59
  And maybe that's where I lost my, uh.
• 38:01
  Well, maybe I never did have any finesse.
• 38:03
  Maybe that's why I corner in the crude way that I do, where I just
• 38:06
  kind of throw the car at the apex and yeah, that's probably right.
• 38:10
  Thank you, producer Eric for your clarity.
• 38:12
  Born out by my 11-year-old son who went, yes.
• 38:15
  Dad, you do have crap lines.
• 38:17
  Yeah, I mean, look, you know, and again, it's, it's the old story, isn't it?
• 38:20
  Front wheel drive.
• 38:22
  Early iterations weren't very good, I think is probably a fair statement.
• 38:26
  But when you cast through things like.
• 38:29
  Primera gts, you know, there are some good front wheel drive,
• 38:34
  good chassis cars out there.
• 38:36
  Yeah, I had a pool Primera two liter for a bit, and it looked like a normal sedan,
• 38:41
  but it rev really well and cornered really well, and I'd forgotten all about it.
• 38:46
  Only had it for about a week and I'd forgotten all about
• 38:50
  it until Hubner had one.
• 38:52
  And Hubner was annoyed that the performance was all up at the top and
• 38:57
  annoyed that the suspension was so hard and found the seat uncomfortable.
• 39:01
  And he was like, if I'd have wanted a racing car, I'd have gotten a racing car.
• 39:04
  Like what were they doing?
• 39:06
  Who were they building this car for?
• 39:08
  No us.
• 39:09
  That was like Hub Nut.
• 39:10
  They were building it for me and they were building it for Mark Gamy.
• 39:14
  That's who they were the car for and we were buying them,
• 39:17
  driving them and loving them.
• 39:18
  Yeah, definitely like, Woohoo.
• 39:20
  You go back to your.
• 39:25
  Thank you Ian Seabrook for your insight.
• 39:27
  Right.
• 39:28
  This is why Ollie's like, why do you watch Hubner?
• 39:30
  That's why I love Hubner because he delivers those kind of like insights.
• 39:34
  'cause his whole approach was so was and is so completely different from mine.
• 39:39
  But look, we've digressed into company cars and away from the
• 39:43
  period company cars though.
• 39:45
  You know, it's the same sort of stuff at the same sort of time, isn't it?
• 39:47
  We're on theme.
• 39:48
  Yeah.
• 39:49
  Red Laguna 1.8.
• 39:51
  I had, they were good cars, you know, they were good cars and they taught you
• 39:54
  to have like your 1.8 that was quite rev and you know, a bit over a hundred
• 39:59
  horsepower, 110, 120 horsepower, whatever.
• 40:01
  And to make use of it properly.
• 40:03
  They weren't that heavy 'cause there wasn't that much safety
• 40:06
  equipment in them at the time.
• 40:07
  'cause they didn't have a lot of like, you know, they didn't have TCS
• 40:10
  and a BS and all that sort of stuff.
• 40:12
  A lot of the time.
• 40:13
  I can't remember if that what my one specifically did on those
• 40:15
  particular items, but they certainly didn't have airbags and roll
• 40:18
  bars and all that sort of stuff.
• 40:20
  So a lot of the weight that's got bogged down, more modern cars now wasn't there.
• 40:24
  So they were still quite spritely.
• 40:25
  You are placing siren ancestor.
• 40:27
  That is the golden moment with that Laguna.
• 40:30
  Right?
• 40:30
  It was like two horses on the other side of the road with Chick Simon,
• 40:33
  and we must have been at about 120 when we came around that corner.
• 40:37
  You had it fully rung out.
• 40:38
  Yeah, and I then locked up for about 40 yards.
• 40:41
  Get it down under 90 and then pass them on the other side of the road.
• 40:45
  I mean, to be fair, what the fuck are they doing on that three
• 40:48
  lane wide a road with two horses?
• 40:51
  I mean, what the fuck are you smoking?
• 40:53
  Get off the road.
• 40:54
  You'd been the most effective HUD saboteur in history.
• 40:59
  Yeah, that'd been my defense, wouldn't it?
• 41:02
  Up in the old, well.
• 41:10
  I mean, I never came anywhere near them, but they did shit themselves a bit.
• 41:14
  Reckon it was the cloud of tire smoke, probably.
• 41:20
  Did you have a favorite driver of the period?
• 41:22
  Well, I mean, early period.
• 41:23
  I mean, Tarini was just so spectacular.
• 41:25
  You had to love it.
• 41:26
  Menu was cool and fast.
• 41:29
  Jason Plato, I liked, I mean I, Jason Plato's, I don't know him,
• 41:32
  but he seems like a pretty cool guy.
• 41:34
  And he's been in the sport for donkeys years.
• 41:36
  I, and the guy won it in 2001 and then 2010.
• 41:40
  And then we're still driving plenty later than that.
• 41:43
  Well, and then he has that TV career as well.
• 41:46
  And I love a car story.
• 41:49
  His story of being hired to drive for Williams Reno is hands down.
• 41:57
  One of the funniest fucking stories I've, I've ever heard, I'm not gonna
• 42:01
  spoil it here, is I, I, I even, I might even cheekily do an exer.
• 42:06
  From the interview that he does in the Late Break Show with Johnny Smith.
• 42:12
  If you credit them, I think they'll be fine with it if you put
• 42:14
  the audio in and the link show.
• 42:17
  So those are my three bullet points.
• 42:18
  Actually, the three moments I had were Tarquini Na, your Man and Jason Plato
• 42:23
  with the heart being hired Story.
• 42:25
  So the only thing I was gonna say is um, 'cause Nige coming
• 42:28
  through from the back in, I think 97 in that mon begs the question.
• 42:33
  Doesn't it?
• 42:33
  If he can turn up like that and then just win it towards the end of the season like
• 42:37
  that in the rain, how, how good are these drivers in comparison to PF one drivers?
• 42:42
  Yeah, it does back that.
• 42:44
  You know what John McGinness said when he finished well, in a touring car
• 42:47
  race, they went, John, you finished like fourth or you're qualified
• 42:50
  like fourth in your first race.
• 42:52
  Like, how'd you feel?
• 42:53
  And he went, wow.
• 42:54
  It's not that hard, is it?
• 42:56
  Which is very John McGinness.
• 42:58
  Um, another great.
• 42:59
  And only, you can only say that when you've won more than 20 tts, can't you?
• 43:04
  Yeah.
• 43:04
  Because relative to the TT on a CB on a $200 sport bike,
• 43:09
  it's not that hard, is it?
• 43:10
  Punting a four wheel drive sedan around rainy Silverstone.
• 43:17
  But to come back to the question, I think that answers your point.
• 43:19
  Yeah.
• 43:19
  I think that they are great drivers, but I think that Nigel
• 43:23
  Mansell was on another level.
• 43:26
  I think that Nigel Mansel, I think those, that notion of the big four.
• 43:30
  The big four were like that because Stephen Hansen wasn't a bad driver.
• 43:35
  Gerhard Berger wasn't a bad driver.
• 43:37
  Ricardo Petre wasn't a bad driver.
• 43:40
  They just weren't on the level of Mansel, PK Pro Center, and those four
• 43:46
  were on that level pushed by each other.
• 43:48
  Pushed by each other.
• 43:53
  So to wrap up our thoughts about BTCC mm, all the manufacturers got involved there.
• 44:00
  There was a creep with regulations, wasn't there?
• 44:03
  I remember the reason Tar Queenie's alpha was so fast was that it had
• 44:06
  been allowed some rather dodgy arrow.
• 44:09
  So it had like a splitter.
• 44:11
  Yeah.
• 44:11
  Yeah.
• 44:12
  Massive.
• 44:12
  It had like a, at sub BSTI, Ferrari, F 40 Plymouth Superbird,
• 44:18
  kind of huge fucking wing on it.
• 44:21
  I never saw a streetcar, I never saw a street 1, 5 5 with,
• 44:26
  uh, with, with that on that.
• 44:28
  So my understanding was that that.
• 44:31
  The, the, basically all of the spend, it just got to be too
• 44:34
  much and it, and the air, well, I've put arrow, flame out, right.
• 44:37
  That basically the, the arrow became too complicated.
• 44:41
  It created gaps between the cars.
• 44:43
  It meant that if they hit each other, the arrow was broken and that car was slow.
• 44:47
  It actually evolved into something which was more like we might
• 44:50
  understand DTM to be Yeah.
• 44:53
  If you compare the cars of the same era, the DTM cars had way more power
• 44:57
  and looked way cooler, way meaner.
• 44:59
  I, I suppose what I'm thinking about is what did for that huge
• 45:03
  level of popularity for BTCC?
• 45:06
  I'm trying to think in my own mind if there was a regulation change or
• 45:10
  if, you know, I just, my lifestyle just changed and I just stopped
• 45:14
  watching TV on Saturday afternoon.
• 45:16
  I think they became, I can't remember exactly what the rules,
• 45:19
  what the regs cha changes were.
• 45:22
  But, um, so let's have a look at what does it say in order to reduce costs.
• 45:26
  Um, the organization introduced new regs in 2001.
• 45:29
  Cut cost dramatically.
• 45:31
  Oh, that was the end.
• 45:32
  Yeah.
• 45:32
  Cut cost dramatically and basically decimated spectator interest.
• 45:37
  The super 2000 rules were adopted in 2007.
• 45:41
  It was cheaper cars, but fewer factory teams, fewer international drivers.
• 45:46
  And then in 2009, they released the next generation touring cast specs,
• 45:51
  which were introduced in 2020 11.
• 45:54
  Again, once you've got regulations for a while, they start to creep.
• 45:57
  They start to creep, and they find areas to spend money on.
• 45:59
  But the reason you know that Jason Plato story is so cool,
• 46:02
  who's he begging for the drive?
• 46:04
  Frank Williams personally.
• 46:07
  Yeah.
• 46:07
  You know, he's begging the F1 supremo.
• 46:10
  Who's building that stuff because the money and the TV coverage and
• 46:14
  it's cutting edge and it, it sort of ceased to be that when manufacturer.
• 46:18
  Yeah.
• 46:19
  But it's the same Reno Laguna as you and I where hand brake turning
• 46:25
  on the way home from the office.
• 46:26
  Yeah.
• 46:26
  And there's something cool about that, isn't it?
• 46:27
  It's your every man car, your dad's car is out there.
• 46:30
  I mean, it doesn't look quite like your dad's car, but it's out there,
• 46:33
  you know, it's got the same oval badge on the front or whatever and it's,
• 46:36
  you know, it's being thrashed around.
• 46:38
  Yeah.
• 46:39
  Which is sweet.
• 46:40
  Yeah.
• 46:40
  By people more talented than you.
• 46:42
  Yeah.
• 46:42
  That was the thing with it.
• 46:43
  Absolutely.
• 46:43
  Yeah.
• 46:44
  Yeah.
• 46:44
  And, and you Yeah, you are, you're absolutely right to emphasize that.
• 46:49
  It's the touch by Formula one, like Nigel Mansel is there driving to the Fort
• 46:54
  Mon, just like sitting on your driveway.
• 46:57
  Yeah.
• 46:57
  It's cool.
• 46:58
  Yeah.
• 46:58
  You know, Jason Plato, the young just up and coming racing driver,
• 47:03
  he is like being hired potentially by one of the legal Formula one.
• 47:10
  Yeah.
• 47:10
  And like, it's the same thing.
• 47:11
  I mean, and linking it back to your NASCAR thing at the start.
• 47:14
  Those NASCARs are nominally these days, a Chevrolet whatever, and a Ford whatever.
• 47:20
  They don't actually look anything like.
• 47:22
  The ones that are on the road, but they used to.
• 47:24
  Yeah.
• 47:25
  And these cars used to, and today they look more like the BTT
• 47:29
  ones still look pretty much like the cars that are on the road.
• 47:32
  Fundamentally, the body shells the same, et cetera.
• 47:34
  So they're not just mechanicals with a plastic body with a badge on the front.
• 47:38
  They actually genuinely are road cars.
• 47:40
  That movie you love?
• 47:41
  Taxi Driver?
• 47:42
  Yeah, the taxi driver.
• 47:44
  Pergo 4 0 6.
• 47:45
  Yeah.
• 47:45
  Look like A-B-T-C-C Pergo 4 0 6.
• 47:49
  Yeah.
• 47:49
  Yeah.
• 47:51
  Until he did all that stuff where it raised itself off the ground and then
• 47:54
  lowered all the splitters and stuff on it.
• 47:56
  But like, yeah.
• 47:57
  Nonetheless it's quality.
• 47:58
  Yeah.
• 47:58
  No, I read a movie review recently and it highlighted that as being, uh, as
• 48:03
  being a hidden gem, and it even talked about what you just talked about that.
• 48:07
  It didn't take itself too seriously.
• 48:09
  Like so many car movies take themselves really seriously.
• 48:13
  It's all like Vim Diesel and, and Paul Walker looking at each other in a mean
• 48:17
  and moody way and like saving the world.
• 48:20
  This is none of that.
• 48:22
  This is, this is just, just simply and, and the fact that it's.
• 48:27
  A middleweight pergio that and the guy's a taxi driver that just adds to it.
• 48:31
  Didn't, didn't he spend the whole movie basically trying to get it
• 48:34
  on with his girlfriend and shit?
• 48:36
  Kept getting in the way.
• 48:37
  Is that that film, the one way he starts off, uh, it might be conflating to two
• 48:40
  movies here, but he's sitting at the ta in the taxi, at the airport reading
• 48:44
  his paper and some guy gets in the back and it's like, I've gotta be in
• 48:47
  town in like 13 minutes or something.
• 48:49
  And he's like, oh yeah.
• 48:50
  And he is like slowly putting his paper away and the guy's like,
• 48:53
  I'll give you extra money if you are in town in 13 minutes.
• 48:55
  He's like, yeah, yeah, no problem.
• 48:56
  And then like takes ages and the guy's getting more flustered
• 48:59
  and ready to get out and he's like, buckle up and then bang.
• 49:02
  He's just, and I think and he pulls up, the guy gets out and throws
• 49:06
  up like, it's like classic again.
• 49:09
  His Japanese movies done their own way.
• 49:11
  Come, it's cool.
• 49:12
  Yeah.
• 49:13
  It is a very french feeling, uh, feeling movie.
• 49:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:16
  Sorry.
• 49:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:17
  Yeah.
• 49:18
  It's uh, yeah, it's quality.
• 49:20
  Alright, mark, thank you very much for your time and thoughts.
• 49:23
  Absolutely.
• 49:23
  Pleasure.
• 49:24
  Thank you.
• 49:24
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• 49:36
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• 49:39
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