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Vauxhall boss praizes results

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Vauxhall’s current race-winning results rank among its finest in almost 20 years of competing in the British Touring Car Championship, according to one of its team’s leading figures. Stuart Harris, head of the manufacturer’s VX Racing brand, says drivers Fabrizio Giovanardi and Tom Chilton’s performances are as good as any he has seen in two decades with the manufacturer’s competitions arm.

Giovanardi has won four of the Dunlop-backed championship’s opening rounds to lie second in the standings to SEAT’s Jason Plato. Team-mate Tom Chilton is third after four podium results. Vauxhall also leads SEAT in the Manufacturers’ and Teams’ title races.

Harris told BTCC.net: “This set of results is probably among the very best we’ve had as we’re coming off the back of two torturous years (with the Astra Sport Hatch) and the team has had to work its socks off in the winter.

“To come out with a new car against proven race winners and be competitive from day one in a championship where there are so many differing types of comeptitive cars is brilliant and congratulations to the team at Triple Eight Engineering which has designed and built this car. We’ve been able to hit the ground running and take the fight to SEAT which I don’t think anyone expected.”

Harris’s words have great meaning: Vauxhall is one of the BTCC’s most successful teams, having won titles in 1989, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Since the dawn of the BTCC’s two-litre era in 1991 it has won more races than any other team and lies second only to Ford in the manufacturers’ wins chart that dates back to 1958.

But Harris is not becoming complacent, as he explained: “I think the calendar has worked slightly to our favour. Rockingham and Thruxton were always going to suit our car where you need good straight line speed and stability under braking. The Vectra’s good at both because she’s quite a bit bigger than the Astra. The longer chassis also helps her to put the power down better exiting the faster corners.

“I think we’ll be OK at Croft (3 June) because it’s pretty rapid around the back, the surface is a bit rough and again the size of the Vectra should help with stability.

“But everyone has a bogey circuit and the Vectra is untried on the twistier circuits. It’ll be interesting to see how we fair at some places that we’ve yet to visit.”

Harris said: “I believe this is the first time since we rallied the Chevette model in the late 1970s that we’ve used a competition car in a major advertising campaign. It is a striking image and the early indications are that this has had a greater impact than previous campaigns.”