Bruce Miles was buzzing after the second Archibalds Historic Touring Car Series race at this year’s Skope Classic meeting at Mike Pero Motorsport Park Ruapuna on Saturday.
Literally hours after his ex-Prince Leopold von Bayern BMW 320i Supertourer had arrived back to the country from the UK, the Christchurch car dealer drove the race of his life to beat fastest qualifier and race one winner, guest driver Greg Murphy, who was behind the wheel of local car owner Peter Sturgeon’s ex Cecotto/Brancatelli E30 BMW M3 Gp A machine.
Never mind that both cars have significant international provenance and combined could well have a current market value north of half a million US dollars.
Both were raced hard by expert drivers at lap times within cooee of what their professional pilots would have been doing in period – and they and the large crowd at the meeting loved it.
Like the first race – won by Murphy from Phil Mauger in the first of the later-model ex BTCC Nissan Primera Supertourers and Miles (who had to start from the back row of the grid having missed the category qualifying session on Friday) – the other three were immensely entertaining affairs.
In the second race of the weekend on Saturday afternoon Miles got an absolute blinder of a start from P2 on the rolling start and grabbed the initial lead. Murphy again set the fastest race lap but – despite getting tantalisignly close, particularly towards the end of the race, could never quite find a way past.
Behind he and Miles, the big story was the way Brett Stevens was charging up through the pack in his ex ATCC Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth, getting as high as fifth before slowing dramatically with what turned out to be a blown intercooler hose.
That left Lindsay O’Donnell in his Volvo S40 and nephew Scott O’Donnell (driving the ex-Paul Radisich Ford Mondeo) just behind fourth placed Arron Black in his E30 BMW M3 Group A car to entertain themselves and those watching as they swapped places with Jim Richards, back behind the wheel of Peter Sturgeon’s other category ‘loaner car,’ the gorgeous ex ATCC GP C BMW 635 CSi.
Series original Kevin Pateman, meanwhile, was the quickest of the locally-produced NZTC car runners in his self-developed V6-engined Ford Telstar with a best finish of eighth
The real beauty of the Archibalds Historic Touring Car category as a spectacle is that while all are nominally ‘touring cars’ the fact that they are from a relatively similar era (1985-200) means that the strengths and weaknesss of the various sub-groups tend to even themselves out over a lap.
With 21 cars qualifying and 23 (with the addition of the late arriving Jagermeister BMW of Miles and its sister car driven by fellow Christchurch driver Murray Cleland) starting each race the sheer number of cars made a spectacular sight for a start.
Even better for the many keen and knowledgeable racing fans who turned up to enjoy another fantastic Skope Classic meeting, was the sheer variety and competitiveness of such a wide range of cars.
From front to back there was something like an 18 second difference in lap times, but the top six cars – a group led by four-time Bathurst winner Greg Murphy remember – were all running between two and three seconds of each other; no mean feat around a 3.33km circuit where the lap times are typically in the (give-or-take) 1:35.00 second bracket.
Parhaps the best bit, however, was the 13-strong mid-field group made up of every possible permutation of familiar and easy to both recognise and identify tin-top, lapping between the high 1:34.000s and low 1:39.000s.
Leading the way – before flat-spotting a tyre and eventually a puncture in the final race – was Phil Mauger in his ex-Matt Neale Team Dynamics BTCC Nissan Primera. Behind him there was a veritable cornucopia of (a lot of different) types and styles of car, each with its plus and minus points as far as the unique mix of fast and slow corners Mike Pero Motorsport Park is justifiably famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) for.
Included in this immensely entertaining mix were the late model (1997) front-wheel-drive (FWD) Volvo S40 Supertourer of Christchurch driver Lindsay O’Donnell and the earlier model ex-Paul Radisich 1994 FIA Touring Car World Cup-winning FWD Ford Mondeo of O’Donnell’s nephew Scott O’Donnell.
The O’Donnells spent most of their weekend battling ‘Gentleman’ Jim Richards (the other guest driver in the field) in Peter Sturgeon’s gorgeous (looking and sounding) rear-wheel-drive GP C BMW 635 CSi, as well as Arron Black in the Warren Good-owned BMW E30 M3 and – as the weekend went on and they started to gain in confidence – Dale Chapman in the Chapman family BMW E36 318i Supertourer, and Murray Cleland in Bruce Miles’ original E36 BMW 320i Supertourer (all RWD).
When it wasn’t blowing holes in its intercooler hoses, Brett Stevens was also part of this group in his (wickedly quick in a straight line) ex Kevin Waldock ATCC Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth (RWD again).
Then – a little further back in the field – there was the awesome (in the true sense of the word) ex ETCC TWR Rover Vitesse now owned and driven by Wanaka’s Allan Dippie, period original Trevor Crowe in his own Gp A-spec BMW 635i, and the International Motorsport built-and-run NZTC-spec ex-Craig Baird and Brett Riley BMW E36 320i twins of Christchurch pair Steven Kelly and Graeme Clyde.
Attracting their own particular following, meanwhile, were the ex-Kevin Bartlett Mitsubishi Gp C of Paul Carter and the original Tim Harvey/BTCC-winning BMW 318is coupe, rebuilt here by Rick Michels of Invercargill’s Evolution Motorsport and now owned and raced by Dunedin man Warren Good.
Mix in Lindsay O’Donnell’s son Matthew in the family-owned ex-Tony Longhurst 1993 BMW E36 318i, Nick Young in his E30 BMW 325i, Robert Broek in his ex-Nissan Mobil Wellington waterfront race E30 BMW M3 and the virtually inseparable Group A Jaguar XJS V12 of Gary Johnstone and Holden VK Commodore V8 of Austin McKinley and you had a visual and aural spectacle the equal of any original period race meeting (without all the frizzy perms and acid-washed denim!)
Richards, of course, has been a regular – and universally popular – series guest for the past two years and like fellow multi-time Bathurst winner Greg Murphy, was not exactly hanging back in any of the Archibalds’ category races.
Though not as nimble as the smaller E30 M3s and E36 SuperTourers, the gorgeous, wide-track GP C 635i really came into its own on the long start/finish straight at the track, the guttural howl the normally-aspirated straight six engine made as Richards red-lined it through the gears worth the price of admission and excellent, collectible programme, alone.
Though there are a number of eligible cars – with more arriving, seemingly, every month – in the greater Auckland area, it is in the South Island where the majority of cars are based. Hence the bumper 23-car grid at the Skope meeting.
It’s not hard to see the appeal of the category either because like the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series the Archibald’s one mines a particularly rich vein of nostalgia; in its case for what many current owners and fans alike consider the ‘Golden Age’ of touring car racing – the Group A and Super Tourer era from 1985 to 2000.
It was a time when some of the best teams and drivers in the world shipped their cars here for rounds of the Nissan Mobil series at Pukekohe and the Wellington waterfront circuit, and rounds of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) were compulsory viewing just days after they had screened in the UK.
It was an era, too, when the cars looked – on the face of it anyway – just like the ones you could buy from Holden (the VK Commodore), Ford (Sierra & Mondeo), BMW (318i, 320i & 325i), Alfa Romeo (155), Peugeot (405 & 406) and Volvo (240T to S40).
The New Zealand’s Historic Touring Car (NZ) Association was set up in 2015 to promote the purchase and active use of Touring Cars from the various categories which were run through the 1980s and 1990s.
Included in this catch-all group are the two most familiar to Kiwi fans, Group A (1985-92) and Supertourers (1992 to 2000), as well as Group C (Australia) and NZTC (NZ’s own 2 litre Touring category)
With interest in buying, where necessary restoring, then race preparing these well-loved and remembered racing cars at an all-time high, Association spokesman Stephen Grellet, who owns and races an ex BTCC Peugeot 406 2.0 Supertourer, says that the series is a timely addition to the programme at classic motor racing meetings around the county.
“It really was a fantastic era and we are very fortunate that many of the cars that were raced in period are still available for us to buy and run in our series here.”
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