Super Touring Power 2 provided plenty of magic moments. There was great racing on track, fantastic demos of touring car machinery of yore, and stars of the past to regale tales of a fondly remembered era.
But for many, the cars themselves were the stars. So, like last year, he we record for posterity the full rundown of 14 Super Touring cars and four BTC-T cars that took part. Note, a full race report is already available on this website.
#1 Steffan Irmler (Opel Astra GSi)
German driver Steffan Irmler was formerly a regular in the HSCC’s Super Touring series, but this was the first time he had managed to bring his Opel Astra to race with the CTCRC. It is a 1994 model built in Britain by Motor Sport Developments for the South African Touring Car Championship where it was a multiple winner in Mike Briggs’s hands.
Briggs also shared the car with British great John Cleland in the end-of-season International Touring Car Challenge at Kyalami. It was subsequently used in central and eastern Europe for several years before Irmler acquired the car and began racing it in 2015.
#3 Robert Salisbury (Honda Accord)
Robert Salisbury has made several CTCRC Super Tourers appearances in his ex-Paula Cook 1998 Honda Accord (pictured above at Oulton Park in 2022). It was built by factory team Prodrive but raced by privateer Cook in 1998 and ’99. Salisbury acquired the car in 2020, clothed it in the 1998 works livery, and began racing it at the Super Tourers’ inaugural race at Silverstone in 2022.
Sadly, a Friday testing gearbox failure prevented Salisbury taking part in Super Touring Power 2’s competitive action.
#5 Jason Hughes (Vauxhall Vectra)
JJason Hughes’s Vauxhall Vectra is from 2000, the last year that the BTCC ran to Super Touring regulations. It was built by Triple Eight Racing Engineering and used as the team’s spare chassis that year.
Hughes is himself a former BTCC driver, and races the car regularly in the CTCRC Super Tourers championship. He was a prime-mover in setting the series up, having taken the car to the 2021 Classic Thunder title, and won the Super Tourers championship in 2023.
#6 Richard Wheeler (Nissan Primera GT)
Inaugural Super Tourers champion Richard Wheeler supplied four cars for the event, including three ex-RML works Nissan Primeras. He races this 1999 chassis himself, fulfilling a long-held dream.
The car has an extensive history, having been used by David Leslie in Nissan’s all-conquering 1999 season. It was then a winner in Swedish Touring Cars in Tommy Rustad’s hands before being raced regularly at club level ever since.
#7 Steve Soper (BMW 320i E36)
Touring Car (and sportscar) great Steve Soper was one of the stars of the Super Touring era in the 1990s, finishing runner up in the BTCC in 1993 and winning the 1995 Japanese title, as well as being a regular race winner in many overseas championships. He also twice one the Macua Guia race, including in a car very similar to this one in 1997.
Soper made his CTCRC Super Tourers debut at Super Touring Power 2 in the car he now jointly owns, having also raced it a number of years ago for its previous owner. The car was built by McLaren when the British Formula 1 team had a close relationship with BMW, which provided a V12 engine for its McLaren F1 super car. Full of ingenious developments, it was a significant step forward from the earlier BMW Motorsport-built E36s raced by Soper in the BTCC in 1992-94.
The car was originally fielded by Italian team CiBiEmme in its home championship for Fabrizio de Simone, then by privateers over the next two years. It spent a number of years racing in the Dutch Supercar Challenge before being brought to the HSCC Super Touring Challenge by former BTCC racer Mark Hazell.
#8 Danny Harrison (Honda Integra Type R)
Another car from the Wheeler stable, this car was built by Team Dynamics to BTC-T regulations and raced successfully by Dan Eaves in 2005. Eaves took it to five wins, including his famous Thruxton hat-trick, en route to third in the championship as team-mate Matt Neal won the crown in a sister car.
It was then used by a number of privateers, including Dave Pinkney and John George, before a spell in the HSCC Super Touring Challenge, piloted by Bernie and Marcus Hogarth. Wheeler acquired the car from Tegiwa Imports and put British Endurance Championship winner Danny Harrison in the driving seat from the first round of this year’s CTCRC championship at Donington Park.
#11 Roger Stanford (Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch)
Colin Turkington’s two-time race-winning car from the 2005 BTCC season, the Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch was a BTC-T car based on the Mk5 Astra and built by works team Triple Eight Race Engineering to replace its ultra-successful previous-generation (Mk4-based) Astra Coupes.
CTCRC stalwart Roger Stanford, a winner of Pre-’66 and Pre-’93 Touring Car championships, entered it for the HSCC’s races at the 2017 Silverstone Classic where it hit trouble. Seven years later, it finally turned a wheel again, allowing Stanford to make his front-wheel-drive race debut and claim an overall podium on Sunday.
#15 AJ Owen (Ford Mondeo Si)
Long-time CTCRC racer and three-time Pre-’03 Touring Car champion AJ Owen had a much more successful weekend in his family’s 1993 Ford Mondeo, running in 1995/96 livery. Until year’s inaugural Super Touring Power, it had last been raced by his father Craig back in 2011, in Classic Thunder, and now runs a Duratec 4-cylinder in place of the original V6.
There is some debate over the chassis’s race history, but it was built by Andy Rouse Engineering and is believed to have been one of the original rear-wheel-drive development cars, converted to front-wheel drive after the concept was abandoned. It was subsequently used as a show car by West Surrey Racing; hence the updated livery.
#17 James Kellett (Mazda 323F)
The Roger Dowson-built Mazda 323F holds the distinction of never racing in period, after a deal with ex-F1 driver (and Abba drummer) Slim Borgudd for 19995 fell through. It uses the same V6 powerplant as the Ford Mondeo.
The car has been through several hands while racing at club level for more than 20 years, and is currently owned by New Zealander Allan Scott, the long-time Tom Walkinshaw Racing engine division manager and author of three books about TWR’s cars.
Porsche Carrera Cup star James Kellett shone against more modern machinery in the car last year, despite its rear rollbar breaking. And having stiffened the front end for this year, he was confident of going even better. But various problems in Friday testing, eventually sidelined the car from any competitive running.
The car is now likely to be shipped to New Zealand.
#21 Kevin Clarke (Vauxhall Cavalier)
The Vauxhall Cavalier driven by experienced racer and Intersport Racing boss Kevin Clarke (pictured above in previous owner Darren Fielding’s hands at Silverstone) has an extensive racing history. It was built as a GSi in 1993 by RML when the squad was impressing under the Ecurie Ecosse banner, before picking up the works Vauxhall deal. The car was first used in the Spa 24 Hours, before Chris Goodwin drove it in the BTCC. It then spent a year in South Africa before privateer Ian Heward campaigned it in updated spec in the 1996 and ’97 BTCC seasons.
It has since been through various hands and was raced by Darren Fielding in the inaugural CTCRC Super Tourers season in 2022. Now part of Matty Evans’s stable, the car had its first run out with a very busy Clarke (who was also racing his BMW M3 in Classic Thunder) at Brands Hatch, but a first-race driveshaft failure sidelined it for the rest of the weekend.
#23 Anthony Reid (Nissan Primera GT)
The second Nissan Primera in Richard Wheeler’s stable is a 1998 RML chassis. A sister to the car Anthony Reid himself drove successfully in the BTCC, it is believed to have been a German STW car.
Featuring mutli-link suspension that makes the car more snappy to drive than with the beam axle on the more refined 1999 model, it was subsequently raced successfully by Formula Saloons prime-mover Garry Woodwoock, winning the 2001 title. It was driven by Graeme and James Dodd in the HSCC’s championship before being acquired by Wheeler and regularly raced by Reid, taking three wins in 2022.
#24 Jake Hill (Nissan Primera GT)
Completing Wheeler’s fleet of Nissans is the 1999 championship-winning car, as raced by Laurent Aiello/David Leslie. It was then given the Primera’s facelift and raced in Sweden before competing regularly at club level in this country.
Wheeler has ensured the car is fully back to 1999 specification and livery, and invited current BTCC star Jake Hill to race it at both editions of Super Touring Power. Self-confessed “Nissan fan boy” Hill remains unbeaten from six starts in the car.
#26 Colin Sowter (Peugeot 406)
Motor Sport Development’s 1998 Peugeot 406 might have looked fantastic but it was not especially successful in period, with Paul Radisich scoring a best result of fourth (in the wet) on his way to 14th in the standings.
In more recent years the car was raced by Stephen Grellet in New Zealand, after spells in Australia and back in the UK, before Superperformance parts supplier Colin Sowter brought it back to Britain.
Having been hampered by various mechanical problems over his first season and a half in the car – his first experience of racing front-wheel drive – the gremlins continued on Saturday before Sowter bounced back with two second-place finishes.
#44 Stuart Caie (Vauxhall Cavalier 16v)
Keen to take part in the inaugural edition of Super Touring Power, club chairman Stuart Caie acquired his 1994 Vauxhall Cavalier from fellow racer Mark Jones. The car was built by RML, which took over the works Vauxhall team from Dave Cook after impressive performances under the Ecurie Ecosse banner in 1993.
The car runs in Jeff Allam’s ’94 livery, and is believed to have been used by John Cleland in that year’s World Cup at Donington Park. It went on to 1995 South African Touring Car Championship glory (badged as an Opel Vectra) in Mike Briggs’s hands and subsequently saw action in Australia before Jones raced it for a few years in this country.
#50 Jim Pocklington (Vauxhall Cavalier GSi)
Jim Pocklington’s Vauxhall Cavalier is one of the very first Super Touring cars, from before that name even existed. It was built by Vauxhall works team Dave Cook Racing for the BTCC’s new two-litre class in 1990 and – similar to AJ Owen’s early Ford Mondeo – used to experiment with different drive layouts.
Two-time BTCC champion Chris Hodgetts drove the car in RWD and 4WD format, and it was FWD when used by John Cleland in the latter part of 1991, scoring two wins. The car continued its life in privateer hands, then spent several years in British club racing with Andy Clarkin before being acquired by Pocklington more than 20 years ago.
#55 Alex Morgan (Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch)
The second BTC-T Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch on the grid was not the same the ex-Colin Turkington/Tom Chilton car that Alex Morgan used at last year’s event and this season’s opening round. (That took part in the lunchtime demos at Super Touring Power 2.)
It is an earlier model, raced by Yvan Muller at the start of 2005 and briefly by Erkut Kizilirmak in 2006, but used mainly as a demo car. It currently has an Astra Coupe rear end, and will be used as a donor car to help the restoration of Morgan’s father Philip’s later Muller car.
That, like the Turkington/Chilton car is being recommissioned by Power Maxed Racing, led by former Triple Eight engineer Martin Broadhurst, with Neil Peters’s Midland Speedshop performing the engine work.
#67 Tony Absolom (Vauxhall Cavalier)
Tony Absolom’s 1995 RML-built Cavalier is a sister car to John Cleland’s title-winning machine. It was driven by Anthony Reid in the final edition of the Touring Car World Cup before being run in the BTCC by privateer squad Mint Motorsport – in whose colours it remains – for the next two years, driven by Richard Kaye and Jamie Wall. Kaye was runner-up in the 1996 privateers’ standings.
The car has been a regular in British club racing ever since. First Nigel Bowen drove it in Formula Saloons and Welsh Sports/Saloons, then it had some outings with former BTCC racer Frank Wrathall in the HSCC’s series. Absolom has owned and raced the car regularly for the past decade. Sadly, the car blew a hole through its engine block in Sunday’s racing, possibly a knock-on effect of the previous day’s driveshaft failure.
#85 Adam Woods (Honda Civic Type-R)
Enthusiastic Cheshire-based Adam Woods is in only his second season of racing. He debuted his ex-Tom Chilton 2002 Honda Civic at last year’s event and raced the same car at Super Touring Power 2.
The fourth BTC-T car in the field, it was run by ex-F1 team boss Mike Earle’s Arena Motorsport outfit in period, and retains an original Neil Brown engine. Woods claimed two top-five finishes over the weekend before suffering clutch failure in the finale.
All images (except #17) courtesy of CTCRC official photographer Steve Jackman/Eat My Pixels
With thanks to the excellent SuperTouringRegister for assistance with background details.
