Bye-bye to the Astra
The BTCC waves farewell to the Vauxhall Astra coupe in 2011, as Boulevard Team Racing sell the venerable race car which dominated the championship earlier in the decade.
The Astra coupe, raced by Martin Johnson for the last two seasons, is being sold to a team in the UAE Touring Car Championship (UAETCC), and so signals that Brands Hatch back in October was the final time the 2001-2004 championship dominating Astra coupe will have raced in the BTCC.
Although BTC-specification cars can continue to compete in 2011 after a recent decision by Series Director Alan Gow, the permission extends to those cars that competed this season only, and with the car now sold, this means the only previous generation BTCC car likely to be seen in 2011 is the Team Dynamics built Honda Integra.
The Astra coupe was introduced in 2001, as the championship moved from the high cost super touring regulations to the new British Touring Car specification (popularly referred to as BTC-spec).
Triple Eight Race Engineering prepared four Astra coupes to the new rules which would face Vic Lee Racing’s Peugeot 406 coupes in the dawn of the new BTCC era.
In the Astra’s first year, five drivers drove for the works Vauxhall squad across the year, including now two-time WTCC champion Yvan Muller, future two-time BTCC champions Jason Plato & James Thompson, future three-time WTCC champion Andy Priaulx…and Phil Bennett.
The Astra dominated in it’s first year, taking 25 wins out of 26 with the interloper being the late MG works entry of Anthony Reid who took a win in the final weekend of the season in heavy rain.
The Astra Ccoupe went on to win the 2002, 2003 and 2004 championships before Triple Eight made the switch to the new shape Astra in 2005, which proved not to be as competitive.
The Astra coupe continued racing in the hands of a variety of independents, most notably Tech-Speed from 2004-2006, adapting the car to run on bio-ethanol from 2005, before they switched to the newer Astra Sport Hatch. This meant the older coupe model sat out 2007-2008 seasons.
Boulevard Team Racing joined the BTCC in 2009 with the old coupe, and despite being a low budget team, still wrestled the car into occasional points finishes with Martin Johnson picking up four points across the last two years.
The Vauxhall brand will at still be represented with the Vectra, built to S2000 regulations with the announcement that Jeff Smith will race at Team Eurotech, with more Vectra’s set to be confirmed.
