Search the Community

Honda Yuasa Racing’s decides to run the Civic Tourer in the 2014 British Touring Car Championship. Cool to see a wagon back in racing. Reminds me of the volvo 850 also in BTCC.

When you think motorsports, most Singaporeans, depending on their age group and how cool they are, will almost everytime mention Formula 1. Then you get go-karting. Unlike most of Europe and even Asia, the local motorsports scene is still in it's infancy, but has been growing with the acceptance and popularity of the annual drift events, go-karting championships and the impromptu races on the expressway with a young punk Civic driver. All aside though, we're pretty much well behind most of the world in that area. Even on the quality of motorsports on tv. Sure sure Formula One is the epitome of motorsports blah blah but seriously guys, the races have become more boring since I started following it religiously about 4 years ago. I now find myself dozing off during races and I'm not talking about the recent Canadian GP. This year's Le Man's was stacking up to be another nail-biter and I was casually short-listing my options on how I could watch the race live. Couldn't find a streamer online that was reliable enough and Starhub's cable lost rights to F1, so generally assumed it lost the license to televising most other races of importance as well - until I stumbled upon channel Euro Sports. I taped the post-race telecast and watched it one sunny afternoon. It was great! I thought I was one of the few people who were lucky enough to venture into the unknown world of channels ranging from 100 to 300. And then I caught BTCC. I

on 850 racing... started in 1993 when vp martin rybeck decided racing 850 would be best marketing tool. so volvo teamed up with tom walkinshaw's TWR racing outfit and stefannson automotive. the first was the "red car," a wagon that did much of the initial testing. so in 1994, volvo entered the btcc with an estate (wagon). great on fast corners, bad on slow corners. best result was rickard rydell managing a 3rd on the grid...but stalled on the start (his start on the grid always seem to be one of his achilles heel in the years following) and a couple of 5th and 6th place finishes. because no spoilers were allowable back then, unless it was built into production car (witness alfa's domination that year), wagon was chosen because better aerodynamics than sedan. 1995-1996, rule change enabled front and rear spoilers, but not on wagons, so sedan was used. 1995 was year volvo should've won, but cleland was able to use his experience to win. 1996 dominated by audi's awd. nuf said. 1997 was difficult due to switch to s40, won by alain menu's williams (yes, same as f1's williams bmw) renault laguna. 1998 was won by rickard rydell. 1999 was last year of volvo racing, won by nissan primera. 2000 was won by alain menu's ford modeo, driven also by rickard rydell (finished 3rd on loan from volvo because of ford's acquisition of volvo).