Photo: Still Photography

Super Tourers prepare for Silverstone

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A large field of classic touring cars are set to line-up for the David Leslie Memorial Trophy at the Silverstone Classic this weekend. Spectators will be able to relive the heyday of 1990s Super Tourers, alongside classes for 1970s and ‘80s slick-shod touring cars.

Among the field will be the former cars of touring car legends like David Leslie, Laurent Aiello, Rickard Rydell, Peter Brock and Fabrizio Giovanardi, to name but a few of the cars in the line-up. A pair of 20-minute races take place during the festival, with qualifying on Friday ahead of races on Saturday and Sunday.

Stars of the field will be the ex-BTCC Nissan Primeras of 1999 champion Aiello and his teammate, the late David Leslie, in the hands of Nigel Bowen and Keith Butcher respectively, while Rick Pearson and Anthony Reid will share the driving duties in another ex-Aiello Primera that was also used by Leslie and Colin Blair in the 2000 BTCC.

One of Reid’s former cars is also on the start sheet, his Primera from the 1996 German STC, a machine he also campaigned in Japan that season and has also seen action with Eric Van der Poele and Pontus Morth, will be driven by Peter Challis. For fans of continental racing there are also a pair of Alfa Romeos from the Italian Touring Car Championship, both used by Giovanardi to win the championship on the peninsula.

Another Super Tourer with a fair amount of air miles will be the Vauxhall Vectra shared by Alex Schooledge and Simon Dickinson. Built by Triple 8 in 1997, the machine was initially used by Derek Warwick in the BTCC, before the former Formula One driver shared the Vauxhall at Bathurst with Peter Brock. This was followed up by a pair of seasons in the Swedish Touring Car Championship at the hands of Jan Brunstedt.

Former machines of past champions John Cleland and Matt Neal add further BTCC flavour, with entries from eight different marques suggesting that should all the cars make it onto the starting grid, then there’ll be plenty of touring car exotica on show for fans.

Rounding out the field will be classics like the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth (as recently featured in ‘The Road Cars of Touring Car Racing’), the BMW CSL Batmobile and the Ford ‘Cologne’ Capri.

MotorsTV will broadcast the Silverstone Classic live on TV.