Grand Prix Rejects

The FIA should not be allowed to steward touring car races. A driver got penalised in the ETCC race today for swerving to avoid a stalled car, are you being Serious!!?

Bennani you're a plum.

Re wtcc stewards, somebody should seriously take their licence away,

http://www.touringcartimes.com/2017/05/ ... e-penalty/

So Stewards would you rather he cream into the back of a stalled car? Or he just slam on the breaks in the middle of the straight?

Yeah, I saw that. It was a spectacularly dumb penalty. Yet no action for Bennani crashing into someone (again) though. Hmmm.....

It's not as if WTCC needs to look any more stupid, they've been doing a pretty good job to self-destruct over the last couple of years without help from stewards.

People.
I'm going to Thruxton on Sunday with a paddock pass. I haven't been for many years. Any advice particularly on when I should get there very welcome.

Spectoremg wrote:People.
I'm going to Thruxton on Sunday with a paddock pass. I haven't been for many years. Any advice particularly on when I should get there very welcome.

I have only been to Thrixton a few times. I have only viewed from the grandstand and the hospitality on inside of turn 1. Much better views from the grandstand. But the paddock pass sounds interesting.

Get there EARLY. Single track country lanes in the middle of nowhere means it gets congested fast. Same as anywhere else I guess, but no-one wants to be sat in queues missing out on action. And with the paddock pass, you'll want to make use of it before the action gets going.

As far as where to watch is concerned, the disappointing thing about Thruxton is you can only watch from the section between the last chicane, and the entrance to Noble corner. That last bit is high up on a big bank so you get a good view back to the first chicane but it's not the best track for spectating in my view. While a lot of action happens at the chicanes, you miss out on the chance to see the cars at full chat on the far side of the circuit. Compared to Thruxton, Oulton, Brands and Donington have much more variety in their vantage points.

AndreaModa wrote:Compared to Thruxton, Oulton, Brands and Donington have much more variety in their vantage points.

Don't forget Rockingham!

But you can still have an enjoyable time at Thruxton.

Thanks for they replies chaps - very helpful.

BTCC needs to stop racing at Thruxton until the track owners pull their fingers out of their arses and update the facility. A bare armco barrier at the fastest corner in the UK is quite frankly unacceptable. Why the bathplug is there not a tyre wall in that location?

Meanwhile, Jeff Smith can bathplug off. Bloke's been driving like an utter assclown all day.

This is utterly farcical.

And the Clios are showing a bit of action too... Just glad there is no repeat of Monger's accident!

Matt Neal got penalised for something, the shock!

East Londoner wrote:BTCC needs to stop racing at Thruxton until the track owners pull their fingers out of their arses and update the facility. A bare armco barrier at the fastest corner in the UK is quite frankly unacceptable. Why the bathplug is there not a tyre wall in that location?

Meanwhile, Jeff Smith can bathplug off. Bloke's been driving like an utter assclown all day.

I was there today. We weren't told that was the case. Either way it took far too long for them to sort it out.

Spectoremg wrote:

East Londoner wrote:BTCC needs to stop racing at Thruxton until the track owners pull their fingers out of their arses and update the facility. A bare armco barrier at the fastest corner in the UK is quite frankly unacceptable. Why the bathplug is there not a tyre wall in that location?

Meanwhile, Jeff Smith can bathplug off. Bloke's been driving like an utter assclown all day.

I was there today. We weren't told that was the case. Either way it took far too long for them to sort it out.

I remember it took an hour to fix a bit of armco at the British GP at Silverstone just a year or two ago...

East Londoner wrote:BTCC needs to stop racing at Thruxton until the track owners pull their fingers out of their arses and update the facility. A bare armco barrier at the fastest corner in the UK is quite frankly unacceptable. Why the bathplug is there not a tyre wall in that location?

There has never really been any barrier at all at church over the years though. The major crashes at church have occurred in the NGTC era over the last few years. I dont recall any major accidents at church in the Supertouring era when the cars were faster then what we have now or even when we had the BTC-T spec cars which lapped thruxton in similar lap times to what we have now.

andrew wrote:Matt Neal got penalised for something, the shock!

Was that in the final race? I only finished watching today, checked the results and noticed that he had been classified 11th whereas I'm sure they said he crossed the road 10th - I don't remember actually seeing anything noteworthy, though.

Barbazza wrote:

andrew wrote:Matt Neal got penalised for something, the shock!

Was that in the final race? I only finished watching today, checked the results and noticed that he had been classified 11th whereas I'm sure they said he crossed the road 10th - I don't remember actually seeing anything noteworthy, though.

Final race yes, he overtook Chilton by cutting the chicane (final) apparently, getting a 0.5 second penalty.

Easily the best BTCC race of the season so far, and certainly the best race at Oulton Park since about 2013. Some seriously robust defending from Aiden Moffat throughout. With Ingram and Turkington both having trouble, Rob Collard's sneaking up the standings.

Shoutout also to that backmarker chap Jason Plato for scoring points.

The Clio Cup is a total embarrassment this year. They managed three green flag laps and two red flags in that race.

Can the Hondas pass anything without taking it out?

I will be amazed if the stewards let Shedden keep that victory, he spent the best part of two laps bumping into Josh Cook before breaking his rear suspension. Cook did a heck of a job not tearing into Shedden when being interviewed, he's got more restraint than I ever have.

Utter shithouse of a weekend for Tom Ingram, I don't think he finished higher than P25 all day. Turkington did a great job to recover as high as he did.

Shoutout to Luke Davenport for his first points finish.

Any one have any idea why Sutton has managed to abstract more from the Subaru then his team mates have done so far.

Shedden receives a verbal warning. Really is that it?

Dan Lloyd has left Triple 8 MG with immediate effect.

This is either a case of him running out of money or, more likely from what I've gleaned, that he's fed up of driving an ancient car which isn't being properly maintained, and is getting out of there before the excrement hits the fan. 888 is now owned by Warren Scott and basically run out of a corner of Team BMR's factory in Hertfordshire. They've got barely any money, so after Lloyd's shunt at Thruxton last month, they had to bring out a chassis which had been badly damaged at Snetterton last year. I absolutely don't blame him if he's taken his money and run.

There is something very, very rotten at the heart of Warren Scott's BTCC empire (just look at the myriad of problems at Subaru), and I daresay it'll all come out in the fall.

Incidentally, most of the old Triple 8 crew are now working for Power Maxed, so it's pretty much a case of them going full circle with the new Vauxhalls.

East Londoner wrote:888 is now owned by Warren Scott and basically run out of a corner of Team BMR's factory in Hertfordshire. They've got barely any money,

I missed this news somewhere along the line. I was wondering why their performance was so poor for so long, and unable to attract top-name drivers. This explains a lot.

East Londoner wrote:
There is something very, very rotten at the heart of Warren Scott's BTCC empire (just look at the myriad of problems at Subaru), and I daresay it'll all come out in the fall.

I always found it a bit odd how BMR expanded from an uncompetitive one car S2000 operation in 2013 to running four NGTC cars with two front-running drivers in 2014. I mean they did merge with Team HARD, but they were never particularly great financially or performance-wise. BMR seem to have almost unlimited funds on the surface considering their astronomical rise to the top in several categories (if B-TEC had gone ahead, they would have been running 11(!) NGTC cars out of their factory in 2016), so the question really is where these funds are coming from (they don't have that much sponsorship).

If anything, this has whiffs of a Vic Lee Racing-style setup...

WHAT.





This story gets stranger by the minute.

Surely Cook would be better of in that Focus. A banana shaped MG is not going to be a improvement. So who gets the Focus seat. Does Dan Lloyd go the other way or does Stewart Lines take back the seat. Or somebody else?.

What the hell is Cook thinking? And this means we'll probably be stuck with Lines for Croft at least. Maybe he'll put one of his VW Cup drivers in later?

As for Lloyd apparently he lost some of his sponsors due to the awful performances this season meaning he no longer had the funding to continue.

That decision by Cook is immensely baffling. You have to feel sorry for Dan Lloyd - great performances in the Honda last year but then the money sadly ran out, and he's been stuck with that awful car this year and mostly been unlucky with accidents often involving other people's mistakes affecting him.

There's definitely something dodgy about Warren Scott's teams - I've said all season that the speed in the Sutton Subaru compared to all the others just doesn't seem right to me. I reckon there's some cheating of some sort going on.

Barbazza wrote:That decision by Cook is immensely baffling. You have to feel sorry for Dan Lloyd - great performances in the Honda last year but then the money sadly ran out, and he's been stuck with that awful car this year and mostly been unlucky with accidents often involving other people's mistakes affecting him.

There's definitely something dodgy about Warren Scott's teams - I've said all season that the speed in the Sutton Subaru compared to all the others just doesn't seem right to me. I reckon there's some cheating of some sort going on.

Well Plato has been crippled by a bent chassis since his Brands Hatch crash which explains why he is off the pace of Sutton. Price is inexperienced and Cole is well... Cole. To me it seems Sutton's form is representative of where the Subaru is and that there isn't that much wrong with them as we initially thought at Brands.

Samster wrote:
Well Plato has been crippled by a bent chassis since his Brands Hatch crash which explains why he is off the pace of Sutton. Price is inexperienced and Cole is well... Cole. To me it seems Sutton's form is representative of where the Subaru is and that there isn't that much wrong with them as we initially thought at Brands.

Im sure that they would rather have 2 competitive cars towards the front and if Plato's car is damaged why dont they just swap the chassis around.

peteroli34 wrote:

Samster wrote:
Well Plato has been crippled by a bent chassis since his Brands Hatch crash which explains why he is off the pace of Sutton. Price is inexperienced and Cole is well... Cole. To me it seems Sutton's form is representative of where the Subaru is and that there isn't that much wrong with them as we initially thought at Brands.

Im sure that they would rather have 2 competitive cars towards the front and if Plato's car is damaged why dont they just swap the chassis around.

Eh its his own fault his chassis is screwed up. Why screw over one of the other drivers who are paying to be there?

And the new driver of the Maximum Ford is.... Dennis Strandberg.

Yeah I don't know either.

Interestingly (I guess), Strandberg is the first Swedish driver to compete in the BTCC since Rydell in 2000, and the first Scandinavian since Moen and Ruokonen in 2001. Besides this fact, there not all that much going for (or particularly against) him; he was a front runner in Ginetta GT5s (essentially grown adults in uprated Ginetta Junior cars) and is doing OK in British GT, which seems to produce some decent BTCC drivers ( Mike Jordan being the best example, others like Glynn Geddie and Kurt Luby less so)

Huge accident in qualifying for the BTCC at croft 8 or 9 cars involved. Luke Davenport and Jeff Smith had to be cut from their cars and airlifted to hospital while Aron Taylor Smith was knocked unconscious.

peteroli34 wrote:Huge accident in qualifying for the BTCC at croft 8 or 9 cars involved. Luke Davenport and Jeff Smith had to be cut from their cars and airlifted to hospital while Aron Taylor Smith was knocked unconscious.

That's crazy! How did that happen?

EDIT: Just found footage. Just when I thought this season couldn't get more farcial! How was a situation like that allowed to happen, looks to me like they redflagged that way too late.

Oh have I ever mentioned before how much I don't like David Addison as a commentator. He's so monotone, how through all of that can you not change tone in your voice or show any kind of shock or surprise is beyond me.

And god knows where this leaves Triple 8 in terms of cars. ATS's car was their only unbent-up chassis left. Eurotech have a spare around and Motorbase could probably get a new Focus built in the season break but Triple 8 are definitely screwed.

Samster wrote: god knows where this leaves Triple 8 in terms of cars. ATS's car was their only unbent-up chassis left. Eurotech have a spare around and Motorbase could probably get a new Focus built in the season break but Triple 8 are definitely screwed.

Triple 8 initially planned to build a brand new car this year to replace the one damaged last year that was abandoned when they brought Marc Hynes car that one being destroyed at croft. So a new shell exists but i doubt they can afford to build it. So it maybe just the one car for them for the rest of the season. Motorbase had planned to build a new Focus as well for this season

http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost.php ... tcount=100

pictures of the damaged cars

Update on driver's conditions from BTCC.net.

Aron Taylor-Smith suffered a fracture to his left leg and concussion. He was closely monitored in hospital and was released late last night.

Luke Davenport is currently in intensive care in an induced coma, and is in a serious but stable condition, with multiple chest injuries, lung damage, broken right leg, broken pelvis, broken right arm and concussion.

Jeff Smith is also currently in intensive care in an induced coma, and is in a serious but stable condition, with multiple chest injuries, extensive shoulder injuries, broken left arm and concussion.

Those are the worst injuries I've seen from this series since I started following back in the Super Touring years. Certainly Smith and Davenport are done for the season, massive shame especially for the latter who seemed to have turned a corner last time at Oulton.

Good news - Jeff Smith has now left hospital and is recovering at home, whilst Luke Davenport is now out of his coma and is communicating with his family and friends.

Meanwhile in the calamity that is WTCC, this has just happened in Vila Real.



That track looks insanely dangerous.