The slow rise of TCR is seen by many as a death knell for the current V8 category. Others look at the cost of a new TCR and cry ‘but it’s SuperTourers all over again’.
Harking back, there have been a series of peak excitements over tintop racing.
The B&H years (1969 and into the 1980s) started with manufacturers and privateers in increasingly quick road cars rubbing fenders on Pukekohe’s long back straight – and sometimes up over the ‘mountain’. Coppins, Richards, Leonard – it’s all been well documented and needs no retelling here. Victors, Valiants, Zephyrs, Falcons. All redoubtable cars of their time. Now long gone.
The advent of group A in the 1980s put a more regimented framework around what could and couldn’t race the B&H endurance series, and coincided with some years that were literally golden, especially for Denny Hulme and Ray Smith. Where is Mr Goldcorp these days?
I attended my first motor race as a photographer that year, scamming a swinger on the coat-tails of my mate Daine who was shooting for Linear. I learned a lot about photography that day, and a lot about sunburn too. Felt pretty special motoring out to Pukekohe in his metallic green 240Z I have to say.
Fast forward: the 2.0-litre touring car championship of the 1990s ran to special schedule of regs and attracted factory supported teams from Alfa, BMW, Ford and Toyota.
At the risk of sounding like an old-ish fart, these were halcyon days when the tintop action was what race fans came to the track to watch.
Never mind a handful of Formula Pacifics, only two of which seemed to be racing at any given time.
Never mind truck racing, the black singlet mob and their smoke-spewing prime movers tearing up the circuit.
This was cleverly conceived motor racing that gave manufacturers a chance to showcase their mainstream ‘three box’ 2.0-litre saloon offerings. Repmobiles, if one was to be so unkind. But also family cars and commuters. Major sellers at the time.
Former Formula one pilot Julian Bailey drove one of the Toyotas, and even agreed to be a very nervous passenger in Peter Caughey’s jet sprint boat when the circuits arrived at Ruapuna – the link being in the team’s other sponsor, Castrol. Peter was also Castrol backed in those days.
The sprint – in a methanol fuelled 700 bhp boat with a hull smaller than the Corona he’d just climbed out of – was over before it began, and Julian clambered quickly onto the bank. He smoked the most awful little cheroot cigars, but needed help getting one lit after his televised ride on Peter’s personal practice track.
The Toyotas were hot rods built to the local schedule by BTCC constructor Dave Cook and they were as fast as the BMWs – but only on circuits that suited FWD cars. The front row of the grid was more often than not a mix of BMW and Castrol Toyotas, with Paul Radisich poking his blue Telstar in there from time to time.
I recall the engine rebuild costs for the Fords were pretty epic, starting from unofficial testing months before the championship kicked off.
Lyall Williamson’s E36 four door BMW 320is were the force to be reckoned with, especially with Craig Baird and Brett Riley forming one of the finest driver pairings in New Zealand motorsport. Ever.
Lyall also gave Jason Richards his chance, making the earlier 325i Coupe available to a fresh-faced Richards just back from a n abortive attempt to break into the UK Formula Ford scene. Jason would repay Lyall’s kindness and vision many times over during subsequent seasons.
Behind the scenes there were constant niggles about what was or was not homologated. The Coronas had a clever dual calliper front brake set-up that made them spectacularly effective at circuits like Pukekohe, where the braking into Railway or the hairpin could see them eliminate any advantage the rear drive cars had on the corner exit. Best of all was when Greg Brinck and Julian Bailey went side by side around the hairpin, stayed that way to the mountain and came over the top with hardly an inch between the cars.
After that classic 1996 season the championship became more and more a rule book environment – rather like the America’s Cup at the time – and the V8s were slowly ascending. Sports sedans became TraNZams, and the big names raced those plastic fantastics and soon the top touring car category was no more.
TraNZam Lights were a single-marque support category and then blossomed into a low tech version of the tribal Ford-Holden rivalry in Australia. The evolution of this into our domestic championship has – like the early B&H days – been well documented, save to remember that at one point the political situation was so tense between Oz and NZ that our local V8s were persona non grata at the’real’ V8s when they came here. Imagine that.
Today, there’s an appetite for the new. MotorSport New Zealand has been looking hard at TCR for a couple of years, and globally the regs are now the basis for the World Touring Car Championship. Small tintops are on the rise.
It seems we are on the cusp of another evolution, and this time we head back to the 2.0-litre future.
Will they co-exist with our increasingly dated-looking V8s? After all, there’s no such thing as a Falcon now and Ford’s current large family car option is the very capable European-designed Mondeo. Likewise, everyone knows the fate of the old Commodore, dropped in favour of a European-designed World Car chassis and a range of engines that doesn’t include a V8.
Longer-term, will they be an evolutionary step and consign the V8s to history? I hear media constantly rattling on about how ‘the crowd’ loves the V8s and the roar of a V8 race start. But there’s every sign the racing will be closer in a TCR event than in the slowly depleting V8 grids where -, like Formula Pacific back in the day – a couple of drivers are there to race and dominate the results while others just drive around to make up numbers.
Decisive – but measured – action is the key.
Comments