Vauxhall boss dislikes S2000

Vauxhall with team VX Racing are building their new Vauxhall Vectra according to the S2000-rules for the coming season. This is the first time ever and the team will face though competition from SEAT who have been running S2000-spec cars since their BTCC-debut in 2004. Team boss Ian Harrison predicts hard times and feels that the S2000-rules is not the way to go.

“There is no doubt that, on paper, the odds are stacked against us – there is no question of that. SEAT has previous experience for the last three years in doing Super 2000 cars and they should know how to do it – we don’t. We are a bit ‘backs-to-the-wall’, of that there is no doubt,” Harrison said in an interview with Crash.net.

“We can simulate things and do simulation work, and obviously we have a lot of testing planned as well. If we have any fundamental issues that other manufacturers over the years may have had and have ironed out, we only have a short amount of time to get them fixed. However, we are aware of that and I think we have the people here to address any problems that we may encounter.”

Previously Vauxhall have build run their cars under BTC specification. New for the coming BTCC season is that only cars build under S2000 (WTCC-spec) specifications are allowed in the main championship. Harrison feels that the only thing the switch to S2000 produces is higher costs.

“The bottom line is that we have gone from a really, really strong set of technical regulations to a really weak set of technical regulations,” he said.
“The S2000 regulations, technically, are appalling compared to the BTCC regulations, but it is what we have got and we have to make the most of it. There is a lot of work, it is a lot more involved and a lot more expensive, and the guys have been burning the midnight oil since August in the drawing office here to try and make head or tail of the rules. The cars are more complicated, more expensive to build and more time consuming, which are basically all the things that you don’t want in touring cars.”

Vauxhall ran their BTC-spec’ cars successfully in the BTCC. During the first couple of years, when the BTC-rules were new, no one could challenge them. In fact the organisers even put extra weight on all of the Vauxhall-cars to make the racing more even. During the later years the competition for Vauxhall was harder, but Harrison feels that the BTC-rules were the best possible.

“We spent five years trying to hone the BTCC regulations and we didn’t really have to do a great deal of honing, we just wrote them and got on with it with one or two changes along the way. In general, they are probably the best series of rules that have ever been written for a touring car championship. Now we are learning the hard way about the S2000 rules. I understand why we have done it and I’m not knocking the thought process behind it, but the reality for someone in the UK trying to build a locally homologated car is that it is a tall order.”