Look at the flames bounced out in the back of Ryndale's car.

Looks like spust too, not a ball book.

Menus hit him.

They've been.

Pushed from behind, three melted down the fairways.

Look at the front of it.

It's like a scene out of Mad Max.

Unhurtly.

Nervous in racing like those British touring cars has.

Certainly Eclipse.

Anything we've ever seen before.

Hello, and welcome to our brand new podcast, the Super Touring Years, a bonus podcast series created exclusively for Paddock Club members.

I'm Levi Riley, and for the first series of this bonus podcast, we're going back to 1998's British Touring Car Championship, breaking it down race meeting by race meeting, from the season opener right through to the finale.

This series exists because you asked for it.

Paddock Club listeners voted on Patreon for a full deep dive into the 1998 season, and this is the result.

Each episode focuses on a single race meeting, examining the story as it unfolded at the time, the build up, the key moments, the controversies and how each we can shape the championship as a whole.

Alongside regular stories from Super Touring contributors, we'll analyse the season with the benefit of hindsight but without rewriting history.

Normally this podcast is for members of our Paddock Club only, but for this first episode we have decided to open up to everyone and if you like it, make sure you subscribe to our Paddock Club.

It's usually £4 a month, but it's going to be 2 LB a month as a special offer for your first month, where you'll also be able to listen to the whole series along with many other benefits and exclusive content.

Joining me this week to look back at the opening meeting of the 1998 BTCC season are Rammets Clark, the creator and writer of our podcasts, and Greg Haynes, World Super Bike commentator, Super Touring expert and a familiar voice to regular listeners of our main podcast, Stories from Super Touring Gents.

Great to have you both with us.

How are you?

Yeah, fine.

Thanks.

We're in a funny mood here because as we record Alexis camera keeps zooming in on him for some reason, which is the last thing anyone needs.

But it's entertaining, isn't it?

It's, it must be just the latest Apple technology.

I don't know.

It's yeah, it just seems to be zooming in and out on me, doesn't it?

So apologies for anyone frightened by that.

But we are also excited, aren't we?

Because I think we will probably all agree that the 1998 British Touring Car season is probably our favourite motorsport season ever.

It's certainly mine.

Out of any motorsport discipline whatsoever, yes, absolutely.

There's something about this season.

It just had everything.

All the ingredients just seemed to add up and it created one of the most spectacular championships in motorsport history.

And I know people will say, oh, it's just, you know, they're looking through those tinted spectacles or not watch this season back.

If you've got the season review, if you've got footage from this season, if you watch it on YouTube, I know there's bits of it on YouTube.

Go back and watch it and you will just see that there is not a dull moment throughout this season.

Every single race has something special about it, has a story, has a plot and it's so great and I was secretly delighted when this was chosen because it became.

There is a three horse race between 9193 and 98.

I quite like the idea of 91 first because it would be the first year of full Super Touring or as it was called then, the two litre Touring car formula.

But I don't think, I don't think anyone would be disappointed to do 1998 first because as, as Greg has just said, one of the most incredible seasons of motorsport in any discipline, any category in certainly our lifetimes.

Yeah, and of course, one of the two seasons that were covered in the Legendary Legendary code, Masters games, Token, Story card, Charity, and of course this was Token 2, PC and PlayStation.

And I don't know about you guys, but if it wasn't for those games, I definitely would not be here talking to you now.

I wouldn't have had the career I've had so far, if you can call it a career.

It was all down to those games and the seasons that those games were based on.

I mean, we had variety, we had drama, we had controversy through the year, we had pretty much every weather condition imaginable.

It stops different looks to the television coverage.

It was just an incredible classic.

Yeah, wasn't it?

With some of the most iconic looking and sounding touring cars ever.

As you say, absolutely silly and we'll get more into it both today and in the next few weeks, but there were an awful lot of unknowns leading up to the opening rounds of the 1998 season.

After a year of domination by Williams Renault in 1997, were any of the teams going to be able to fight back this season?

With eight well funded manufacture entries and with the possibility of a ninth coming into the series during the second-half of the season, the BTCC was clearly riding as two both said on the Crest of a wave.

The BBC had committed to showing more live events on BBC One Grandstand and the introduction of a BTCC game on PlayStation.

The PC in the form of the Toker series had gained the series even more fans than before.

The major talking points of the pre season were the introduction of new race links in 1998.

Each round was now split into a Sprint race and a feature race, the feature race being twice the length of the opening Sprint race with a mandatory pit stop to change A minimum of two tyres also added into the mix.

Guys, we'd love to know your thoughts on the changes to the championship for the 1998 season with both the Sprint and the feature races, and also the pit stops as well.

Well.

Just as you mentioned Toker then it reminded me the computer game and we've just been talking about it.

Sorry.

I'm I'm we'll go back to your question now, but it reminds me of a story that Reedy has told me.

Anthony Reed has told me that he was.

I can't remember where he said he was, but he was at some sort of event race meeting and Romaine Dumas, the French sports car driver, was there.

I think it was a good word or something.

Good word.

Yeah.

And and and I think Anthony introduced himself.

And the third thing Roman Dumas said was, Oh my God, I used to play as you on Toca 2.

So that's the sort of reach that the game had.

And I just think that was a great, that's a great story, isn't it?

Yeah, and people often used to say to John Cleland as well, you took me off on Take a Two last night or whatever.

I remember it was always Derek Warwick that took me off on the game.

It was always Warwick.

Very, very realistic actually.

Always rude boy Tim Harvey for.

Rude boy.

Rude boy.

So, but it was so realistic, wasn't it?

I mean, the sounds of the cars as well and they were and the damage.

Because back then you're up against things like Gran Turismo, which didn't really feature any car damage at all.

And those Code Masters games were absolutely phenomenal.

And just also, as you touched on Levi BBC Grandstand, it was getting coverage everywhere because we've talked about this in earlier series of the podcast, in the regular series of the regular episodes.

But Nigel Mansell even appeared for a second time on the one and only Knowles house party.

And that at that point, late 90s was getting anything between 6 and 10 million viewers on a Saturday evening to preview his Donnington races.

I mean, that is amazing.

They even did the Ford launch in the BBC television studio on the set of Knowles House party.

This was huge.

And Williams, Renault of course, were the reigning champions, as you said, not just in the touring car world but also in Formula One as well.

So this was a huge time, a massive time.

Formula One teams in the paddock bringing their knowledge in for the pit stops.

The likes of TWR with Volvo, Williams of course, with Renault.

Absolutely amazing.

Well, you mentioned the F1 teams and it's notable that every single team principal involved in Formula One was flew straight over from the Argentine Grand Prix on the Sunday for this event.

On the Monday you had Frank Williams was there, Tom Walkinshaw was there and Dr Dave Richards was there for with the with the Honda Pro Drive team.

They flew over straight from the Grand Prix, all to be there.

And I think that just shows how serious this championship was, was it wasn't becoming, was.

Right, then back to the question though.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

It's my fault.

What what did you guys think of of the changes for 9910?

We also had the the one shot qualifier thrown in the mix as well, which we'll get on to.

I thought it was great.

I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

So yeah, like you say, we'll get on to it.

But the One Shot Showdown was the second of the qualifying sessions to take place, but actually decided the grid for the Sprint race, the first race and then we had the long feature race in the afternoon with the pit stops.

Brilliance of the point system as well.

Awarded a bonus point to anybody who stayed out and LED a lap.

Alexis cameras doing funny things again, which is making me laugh.

But if you led a lap of the feature race, if you crossed the finish line in the lead position, you scored a point.

So it encouraged a lot of the teams who started further back to stay out on a latest strategy.

Sometimes the front runners would come in first and then they'd be out on fresh tyres in clear space, but then they'd start catching these slower cars and it absolutely shook things up.

And we saw a lot of races, particularly early on in the Year 1, and more importantly lost because of slow pit stops or poor strategies or getting stuck in the traffic.

So I thought it was brilliant.

Yeah, I was concerned about the pit stops.

The only concern I had was that it would diminish the racing because they would sort of say, Oh well, I'll wait to the pit stop.

But it that never really came out, that never really became an issue.

Overtaking was still happening on track.

So it was, yeah, it was never really a massive issue.

I like the fact that it brought the teams in a bit more as well.

Yeah, I like the fact that they were longer races.

I've always thought that, OK, you don't want to race, it's too long.

But the current, the the prior to 98, the races are about 25 minutes, half an hour each race.

And I like the fact that you had maybe a 25 minute race, but then like a 50 minute race and I thought that was really cool.

You know, 50 laps of Brands Hatch.

That's really cool for a touring car race, you know.

So yeah, I liked all the changes and I particularly like the One Shot Showdown because you had drivers just going out there and if you went to a qualifying day at touring cars, it wouldn't be the most interesting session to watch the 30 minute qualifying session.

Whereas when they just had one lap to just go for it, balls out the bath type thing and just really try and nail a lap and you had incidents like plot twist or so, plot spoiler menu, losing it at the club chicane, cutting through the chicane, taking pole and then getting thrown to the back of the grid.

You know, that created great drama for the races too.

So yeah, no, everything that there's introduced I really liked.

And I liked, as Greg mentioned, the point because I can particularly recall at Oldham Park, and I'm sure we'll discuss it when we get to that meeting where Paul Radisson just is, will be still, many will be spitting blood trying to get past Paul Radisson because he's just there constantly just hanging on for this one point and possibly the only point that Peugeot would score that day because they were struggling at this point.

So it's brilliant.

It added another dimension to the feature race that, you know, this Peugeot suddenly with A, was in the lead of a race and B could score a point when ordinarily it would have just been languishing in 14th place and wouldn't wouldn't have seen very much of either coverage or B the race, to be honest, you know, So, yeah, brilliant.

They were all excellent ideas.

Yeah, commercially it was great as well for some of those smaller teams because they were getting more TV time, you know, some of the dicing with the leaders, as you've just said, Alex, because, you know, they're mixed up because of pit stops.

And let's just remember why they did this as well.

The BTCC always has done, certainly since the Alan Gow era began in the late 80s, early 90s and even to this day prided itself on being completely unpredictable, which means not having another 1997 which was utterly dominated wasn't it, by Menu and the Renault, Laguna and Williams?

So it was very much done to stop them, very much like the 2003 F one season I feel, when we had a massive shake up in the rules with the point systems and qualifying change there as well.

In the end Schumacher did win the F1 title in 2003 but it went right down to the wire for the first time in a long time.

So yeah, you have to say the victims in many ways were Menu and Williams and Renault, but from our point of view it was absolutely brilliant, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

One other major change for the 1998 season was the departure of Murray Walker from the BTCC commentary box, with the BBC deciding to promote his 1997 sidekick Charlie Cox into the lead commentary position, with former F1 race winner John Watson hired to accompany him.

When the deal was announced, Cox said.

Well, the way I look at it, I'm taking over from Murray, not replacing him.

Nobody could do that so I won't even try.

I'll be loud, boisterous and we'll continue the Wise cracking and highlighting the funny side of the things.

I don't intend to change that and the Beeb don't want me to.

It'll be different working with John Watson who is a driver of undisputed pedigree.

He's not backwards in coming forwards either so his views will be entertaining, which I think ended up happening during our practise runs together.

I think we crushed 2 careers and rivalled three other people within the 1st 7 minutes.

I mean, I think I know the answer to to what you guys will say to this question, but do you think the BBC got this this decision right of the pairing?

Oh, absolutely.

Yes, they did.

Yeah.

Charlie was the perfect lead commentator.

And what?

He was the perfect foil because as I've said many Times Now, I liked Charlie's wisecracks.

You know, he talked about highlighting the funny side of things.

You know, his catchphrases were really memorable.

He was just a brilliant talker and he made things sound so much fun that he was perfect for the role.

And I know we had a debate about this in the last series, didn't really have the main pod when Jake, one of our regular listeners, said that he preferred Charlie and Watty to Murray.

And I agree with him totally, 100%.

I think they suited the style of racing better.

And I really like the fact that you had somebody in Watty that would call out bad driving and really say it as it is, which as much as I love Murray Walker, he would never really do that, would he?

You know, he was always.

Sunnyside up.

Yes, that's a very good way of putting it, you know.

Oh, Martin, you are a cynical chap.

Ironically, in 98.

Yeah.

So yeah, it was the perfect the the the perfect pairing as far as I was concerned.

Yeah, it's obviously things have changed, haven't they?

Because Murray I still believe is one of the greatest people in the history of not just motor racing, but certainly the BTCC and what he did along with Steve Ryder and obviously they're absolutely PHP.

But things have changed, haven't they?

The year before in 97, they'd gone from 1/2 hour highlights programme to a 30 sorry, to from 1/2 hour our highlights programme to a one hour highlights programme.

Murray had focused on F1 and Watty and Cox.

They had to get this right and they really did.

And I never knew until John said to us on this very podcast that he was going to be the lead.

That was the original idea because he'd LED commentaries before.

He'd been doing a sort of joint lead role effectively with Ben Edwards in previous years on Eurosport for Formula One.

And that's a dream team as well, Watty and Ben.

But with Charlie it worked brilliantly as well, didn't it?

And we know they had a few Contra tonnes between them be trucks to 99, as they both said to us on this podcast.

You know, it got a bit heated, a bit like James Hunt and Mary Walker back in the day.

But it really, really did work, didn't it?

And it was a great dynamic.

There were some really funny moments.

And it's exactly what the temperature needed.

Because that could have made or or broken the whole TV situation.

Actually, it really could.

Yeah, the wrong appointment there could have killed it.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're never going to replace, as Charlie said in that quote, you've just read, Leave Like Murray Walker.

But he did it his way, and that's the way you have to do it.

And it was brilliant.

Whether it was the recorded highlights that made touring cars what it was back then, all the few live rounds they were then beginning to have, it worked really well in both cases.

Silent.

The first round of the 1998 season was held at Froxton on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Now before we get into the the Sprint race side of things, probably the first thing to address in terms of the on track action that weekend was the Sprint qualifying.

We've already alluded to it, but Alan then knew Completely unstoppable in 1997 pretty much puts in a pretty much hell of a lap to be honest.

A 90% of the way around the club Chicane all goes wrong doesn't it?

And he misses it.

That was really the the first kind of wake up call that the 98 might be different, wasn't it?

Yeah, well, as he put it in his interview post qualifying, it's exactly what Toko was looking for.

And it was because he said, you know, as he says in the interview, what Toca wanted was somebody quick to be at the back and have to fight their way through the field.

And that's exactly what they got.

And he was saying, I bet they were happy at Toca.

And it's a slightly barbed response, but it's exactly right.

He's spot on.

That's exactly what they would have looked for.

They would have wanted somebody or the the grid to be shuffled up enough that would create a bit more drama for the for the opening race.

Yeah, this race meeting in my opinion could not have been better.

Actually you had quite a lot of different looking cars.

Let's also not forget that the Renault Lagoon has gone from yellow to green paint with the Nest Cafe Blend 37 colour scheme.

Huge difference, especially to people like Kirstie Were really into the helmet designs and the liveries of the cars.

And it had the rear light clusters were new and the smoked front lights, yeah.

All this ball who could.

The the.

Smoked.

Front lights.

Alan Partridge is amongst us.

Did they have a Toblerone on board?

But no, it was, it was it was a perfect way to start, wasn't it?

And to see menu coming through we'll get to the race in a moment was absolutely spectacular.

Let's also not forget that it was only the second time in the whole of the Super Touring era that Thruxton actually started the season 94 was the previous time.

It's not often that Thruxton starts a season in any motorsport, and track activity at Thruxton is very limited through a year because noise restrictions.

So whether it's bikes or cars, Thruxton tends to throw up normally in most seasons.

Quite a different result to the rest of that year.

And it looked.

I won't spoil the results, but I'm sure those of you who are listening to this already know them.

But it looked at the end of the weekend like a normalish weekend for results.

But it was certainly not to be the pattern for the season ahead, was it?

And then, as you know, we get to the start then of that very first race and Will Hoy and Matt Neil didn't exactly get off on the front foot on the first lap.

Did they just just guide us through their little battle and inevitable demise in this Sprint race?

Well, first of all, Rydell had made a bad start, hadn't he, from pole and dropped to the third behind James Thompson's Honda and Plato's Renault?

And then yes, we get through church on the first lap.

I remember the coverage showed on board with Tim Harvey's Peugeot.

You got smoke everywhere and Warwick is spinning the Vauxhall Vectra.

It's not even the end of the first lap of the season and Warwick's off and then everyone was trying to back out the way, dart around him.

Binkliff got involved in the ALDI and I remember Matt Neil saying Will jammed his foot on the brake going through church.

He went into the back of him and then I think someone lost it and sideswiped Matt Neil.

And the next thing you see is I think Matt Neil was described as the two would and Will Hoy was the golf ball by so a great one liner already from Charlie in the first lap of the year.

And Alex, we see Will Hoy shooting off the infield a little bit like Mike Smith had done at Donnington some years before.

Doing a bit of mowing, I think was it was described as.

And yeah, Will, I love the fact that Will's just sort of trundling along the grass.

All you can hear is him just go.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, sorry.

Well, I didn't hear that, but what's up?

And yeah, it was a it was a weird, a weird accident, but very, very much a typical first lap bit of dumping and boring that that just ended up with, with Will Harley, not for the first time, coming off worst.

Yeah, and ironically, of course we didn't know this at the time, but Fast forward just over a year and we had a similar incident with Menu in Plato on the opening lap of a race coming out of church in 99.

So it kind of happened.

Cold tyres, tyre warmers were being used, weren't they, in 98 for the first time for the BTCC.

But Even so, cold tyres, first lap, fastest corner in the country, fastest track in the country, carnage.

Good for the TV viewers though.

And then is she, is she mentioned Greg, right?

I had a pretty customary poor start firing fuel out of the back of a car as well as we'll probably come back to in a little bit.

From then on though, it looked pretty much like it kind of felt after qualifying that that Volvo in Rickard's hands was really somewhat the class of the field in especially a shorter race ball.

And that wasn't it.

Yeah, it's interesting because quite there was quite a few people when they're up at the front representing their team, their brand, their manufacturer, Thompson in the lead Honda.

Plays their lead.

Renner because many would have his problem in qualifying.

Claire Andrews up there in a Vauxhall which we haven't seen for a very, very long time since the end of 95 when he won in the Cavalier the championship.

But yeah, Rydell, not only was he a long way ahead of his ex F1 teammate Morbidelli.

Morbidelli having come in from Saud with the previous year.

But he just looks so much more comfortable, didn't he, with the car underneath him?

The only question mark, though, was menu because he was fighting his way through the field.

Yeah.

So we're all thinking what's going to happen in the feature race later.

But Rydell, definitely.

You could tell they'd made a huge step forward, couldn't you, over the winter?

Well, Rydell's pole lap was a second quicker than Thompson, who was alongside him on the front row.

That's madness.

As Greg said, you don't need a discounted menu there.

Who was going quicker at the time before he had his his mistake in club.

But yeah, that was that's one heck of a lap.

That's that's as good a lap as possibly as Bathurst pole lap.

It's a shame he can't start.

Yeah, yeah, imagine how many titles he'd probably want to, because.

He'd certainly lost a lot of races, didn't in a lot of points through 1995.

Yes, 1998, you know, and other times as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

But there was also massive pressure wasn't as we said, Tom Wilkins show was there.

He'd been with arrows with Damon Hill and Pedro de Nirs in Argentina the day before flying back across the Atlantic.

Jet lags, I'm sure to to hell, but was there.

But there was pressure because this was the fifth year revolver in TWR.

And as John Watson alluded to in the season review video, there was almost the threat that if we don't get this done, you know, we might go somewhere else.

TWI might have lost the contract.

How long was Rickard Rydell going to stick?

Right?

You just didn't know, did you?

The pressure was building.

They had to before.

It reminds me of Reedy's quote at the end of this season when they're fighting for the title and someone said to read, you must be feeling the pressure anyway.

Well, I'm not the one in the 50th, my manufacturer contract trying to win the championship.

Am I also along those lines?

And yeah, so that, yeah, it just shows, isn't it?

That yeah, I've got a funny feeling something would have happened in Volvo hoods let this slip through their fingers.

Yeah, and the second year of the S40, of course, also in a new colour scheme.

It had gone from white to silver and blue.

I much prefer the silver and blue.

Yeah, it looked fantastic, didn't it?

Yeah, it looked amazing.

But yeah, the pressure was really, really on.

So psychologically, that was probably the most important element of that women and.

And as as we've already mentioned, Alan was pretty much the style of the show in the Sprint race, wasn't he?

It's hard to the amount of moves that he pulled, you'd have been easily forgiven for thinking that was the feature I see did all that work in it.

It was pretty spectacular that charge up the field, wasn't it?

And showed that he may have made a mistake, but he was still around.

He was in the quickest car though.

He was the quickest car.

Would you have the Volvo?

Well, over one lap he was quicker.

He was on point to be quicker.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

But I mean, you, you look at the feature race and the rain was quicker than the revolver.

So, you know, you've got your star driver who's probably the the world's leading Super Touring driver at that point in what everyone still assumed at that point was the world leading super Touring car.

And you're cutting through a field of yeah, I don't know.

No, it was a good drive.

I'm not trivialising.

It was a very good drive.

But the first person he come across without a problem or that was decent and had a good pace and he couldn't get past him.

And I guess to get on to that, the flip side of that is also to highlight John Cleland and Vauxhall and AAA had done a magnificent job in the winter.

Quite clearly from what was some, you know, 96 wasn't the easiest first year of the Vectra.

97 was a pretty terrible year from a Vauxhall perspective.

They were batting for bang, weren't they, John?

John held off Allan brilliantly in in.

It was just like old times.

John Kerlan battling Allan menu at the front end of a Super Touring race.

It's how it should have been, shouldn't, wasn't it?

Yeah, I mean, Coland at this point, don't forget having won his second title in 95, first in 89 in an Astra, second in 95 in the Cavalier, then hadn't won a race in still at this point had not won a race since winning the championship in 95.

And again, the pressure was on.

It was the third year with the Vectra 888, the Derek Warwick organisation with Mike Nicholson and Co.

We're running the cars now and had been since 97.

New car came in about halfway through, 1/3 of the way through 97 didn't it?

But the error package had been sorted out, but it had never really translated properly.

Had it from the Opal Vector on the continent, which is designed for very different circuits.

They now are fantastic, full of character, quirky, tight, twisty, strange tracks we've got in the UK.

It's the same with motorbikes.

The way the vehicle uses its power or traction to the ground and all these other things is very different to what you see a normally flatter, quicker tracks on mainland Europe.

And finally Clinton was up there and that battle we saw between the two of them, we hadn't seen menu like this for a long time, had we?

He'd been very careful in 97, often winning from the front, didn't need to fight.

But this was great.

He was sideways, he was bagging into people, he was bumping into the back of people.

And it's it for this championship itself.

I really don't think it could have been better.

If you'd written a script, this would have been more or less the sort of thing you'd gone for.

Yeah, John's defensive of many was brilliant.

It was incredible.

And Alan, was he getting frustrated behind him because there was a lot of contact.

There was a lot of contact.

And I love the interview afterwards where Alan says that John was a crafty little booger.

Yeah.

And, you know, play, you know, John SAT it in the exact right point.

It needed to be.

Alan was not getting past there.

Was that incident coming out of Campbell Colvin Seagrave on the last lap where, Yeah, where Alan tags the back and.

Tags the back, yeah.

It's not really mentioned in the commentary or anything, but that say from John Cleland is incredible.

It really is.

It's a really good save.

The camera just about catches it, I think.

I don't think it's mentioned because it's not, it's not really focused on it.

But if you watch, if you watch the Vauxhall rather than the Renault, you can see it's a hell of a catch.

And, and, yeah, great driving and and great to see JC up there because people were starting to question had had had his time come and gone, you know, was it time to get someone younger in the Vectra?

Had had John Cleland, you know, was he wasting a seat type thing?

And I'm glad to say that, you know, he put on a real good show.

It was great to see a Vauxhall back at the front.

And that pretty much sums up the Sprint race to to recap the top five.

There you add Rydell winning Plato second, Thompson in 3rd in the Honda which we haven't really mentioned, but a solid drive from James, and then McClelland in Vauxhall Vectra 4th and a menu 5th leading independent Mark Lemma in the Vauxhall Vectra.

Impressive because it was the the the least funded outfit on the grid.

Yeah, he was coming from the vector challenge.

Yeah, good performance from Lemma so.

Coming to the feature race then and before I guess we get into the mid race element of the pit stops for the first time, we have the second sighting of Frost 2 off the line as it was described in commentary.

We've been, we've mentioned it before, haven't been on the main podcast with the Volvo and it's an ongoing mystery.

The seat, was it deliberate?

Was it an accident?

Yeah.

It did lead to oil gating race.

It wasn't really.

We saw the flames in the Sprint race, but it didn't really seem to affect anything.

In the feature race.

It became quite a problem and one that became worse at the pit stops depending on team's actions.

I mean, when you think about it now, if that's something like that happened in a race, now they'd probably stop the race, I think.

It was.

Really dangerous in hindsight.

Yeah, it was crazy.

And I know there was debate on whether it was many was blaming Reed.

Someone else was blaming Reedy as well.

I can't remember who, but it was very clear where the oil was coming from.

You know, those big black scorch marks are basically bumpers and then leading from the exhaust up to the back of the boots to the point where you couldn't read Volvo on the on the boot.

Yeah, just bizarre.

I mean, and, and, and the amount of cars that had to come in for their pit stops anyway.

And when they were coming in, they were saying can you clean the window for me?

And all it was doing because you had rain in the air as well.

All it was doing was just smearing a layer of just this horrible film on the prospects of the polycarbonate, sorry to give it its proper, proper name windscreen, because obviously these were in glass at this point.

And it just left.

There was one bit of footage from Reed's Nissan and he just, you just couldn't see.

And he, in fact, he came in again and said, I can't see a thing.

You're going to have to clean it.

Yeah, but funny enough, not one smudge on the Volvo windscreens.

Interesting coincidence, I'm sure.

It was a bit like some sort of Wacky Races deployment Dick Dastardly sort of thing, wasn't it switched the oil on.

But it was, it was a terrible mess and like you say, the fact it mixed and maybe everything will opaque on the windows.

It was, it was strange and we've never really known to this day have we?

Were surely they didn't do it on purpose.

I can't imagine for one second they do it on purpose.

But they were clearly running a very fuelly car and it never happened again.

So I don't know what the background is, whether they were asked to do something different or what, but it never happened again.

They were.

They were asked, they say.

We'll talk about it in this week next week's episode.

Before the pit stop phase, we did have another car that you know, probably to back up the theory it was coming from the Volvos that didn't have anything on his windscreen was Ala menu out front.

Before the pit stop phase, it seemed like a pretty good race was developing between him and Rydell.

It for a moment, felt like the makings of a classic was on, didn't it?

Yeah, it was a good battle.

It was a good battle that I don't know about anyone else, but I just assumed wrongly in this case that Williams, well, they've got a Formula One team so they're pit stops are going to be brilliant.

And it turned out to be that's a rubbish because the pit stop was awful compared to the vulnerable boys, in fairness, who also had Formula One experience with, with Arrows, with TWR arrows.

However, I remember we've, we've talked about this before, there wasn't that much F1 information or advice poured down into Touring Car Williams Touring, certainly Williams anyway, Williams Touring Car Engineering seemed to be quite a separate entity.

So despite the fact that they were part of the Williams Formula One team, there wasn't that much advice coming down from from from the from the Grand Prix side of things.

One thing we did see though is the season went on was with Menu in particular.

He became the master of the Schumacher approach to approaching the speed line, didn't it?

The greatest possible speed, slamming the brakes on to lose his little possible time, but coming into the pits and then obviously a rapid outlap as well.

Remember Reed being asked to push really hard on outlaps later on in the season?

We should obviously just mention that Renault did have to clear the screen, but Even so, it was not a good pit stop and they they cracked under pressure, didn't they?

And Menu, who'd pulled a great move on Rydell earlier in the race, had all that hard work to do again.

But it probably actually gave us a better race because had it been a non pit stop race, Menu probably would have been gone, having passed Rydell into the complex quite early on.

So it put Rydell back in front and Menu had to hunt him down.

So that pit stop thing was already working well, wasn't it, in terms of shaking up the order?

Yeah.

And as she say, probably if it had been not a piss race, it would have been a last race because once he was through, he then just.

It felt like 1997 all over again, didn't it?

Alan Menu romped home to victory, and perhaps it was just a blip, was what we were thinking, wasn't it?

Yeah, I remember John Watson was a real advocate of Menu in the commentary at the time, saying, you know, he's still very much the favourite.

I mean, the movie pulled around the back of the circuit down through Goodwood and into church was incredible in those conditions.

I think Ryder was probably being a bit careful, bearing in mind he'd won the race.

He was already playing the percentages, I think.

But great, great move from Menu.

And let's be honest, I don't.

Alex, you were there, weren't you, on the day?

I mean, surely you would have felt you would have had to be quite brave or maybe a bit silly to bet against Menu at that time.

I mean, he'd been so dominant the year before.

Absolutely.

And if you think as well, he would have stuck it on pole in the Sprint race, yeah, had he not made the mistake at club Rydell makes the same start menu, goes off into the distance and probably wins.

So yeah, in another world menu, that's a double win and you're probably thinking whatever took a throw at it, Williams and Renault, we just got the answer.

Yes and what was also great there was just the fact the field had Constantine hadn't it?

Obviously those who prefer the bat had more ground to make up, but it was definitely, definitely closer with all the different teams and that was brilliant because we saw some great fighting in the midfield.

There was 1 little incident, wasn't on the foot.

I say little because quite big actually.

On the first lap Tommy Rushdad in the ex Plato car from the year before went off contact with Radissitch at the chicane and hit the barrier heavily.

Yeah, but it was a relatively incident free race day wasn't it?

Not too many big impacts, a few incidents, but not too many.

Big impacts, nothing major.

The only one that's rings a bell is Beardo having his door, having to be having his door taped back on because him and him and Moby Daly had a bit of a Contra to the club chicane and they looked like a pair of midnight mini cabs.

And that's not my line.

You'll be surprised to know good old Charlie.

But yeah, it was pretty instant free apart from a couple of bits.

And actually, that kind of summed up Morbidelian bed seasons right there, didn't it?

Right from the first meeting of the season.

Pretty much, yeah.

Yeah.

And it wouldn't be a British April Day, perhaps with some showers.

And one of those showers turned into a flurry of snow at the end of the race.

Alex, we already mentioned you were there.

That pretty chilly that sounds, doesn't it, for Easter?

It was freezing, but bizarre because I don't remember ever being a racetrack before or since, and it's snowing, so the only time I can think of that happening.

And.

And yeah, it wasn't sticking because it would already rained a fair bit.

Yeah.

It was just unusual that he didn't really expect it to be a BTCC event and it starts snowing.

Yeah, a bit of an odd one.

One final thing I'm just going to throw in here because I think it's important is the dismal start to the season for Anthony Reed and Nissan, who of course would go on to be the closest challenger to Rydell right down to the last race meeting.

He was pretty much nowhere at this point.

All sorts of problems.

They were well off the pace.

So just bear that in mind, the progress Nissan were to make, not just before the next round at Silverstone, but all across the rest of the season because it was not a good start for Ray Malik and for the Nissan team.

And it was a weekend really, that showcased the new rules designed to spice up the British Touring Car Championship, especially after the domination of Williams in Renault the previous season.

Final thoughts from you 2 gentlemen?

Do you think the new rules had worked on evidence of the first race meeting in 1998?

Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Everything ticked the box.

There wasn't one.

There wasn't one ruler.

I thought, no, that that that really didn't work out.

Everything was brilliant.

The only thing is you couldn't really see the yellow strips under the names because they were so thin, which they amended for the next race.

So Alan Gow was listening.

That just about wraps up our look back at the opening round of the 1998 BTCC season at Froxton.

A fast, unforgiving circuit, a sacked grid and all the ingredients that made Super Touring such a special era.

Intensity, intrigue and absolutely no margin for error.

Thanks for joining us for the first episode of the Super Touring years exclusively for Paddock Club members.

If you enjoy diving a little deeper into the stories behind the races, there's plenty more to come.

If you aren't yet a member of the Paddock Club and enjoyed this first episode, subscribe to The Paddock Club on our Patreon.

The link is in the description of this episode and you can then listen to the rest of the series.

We'll be back next week as the championship heads to Silverstone for round two of the season.

Bigger speeds, bigger stakes and more twists in a season that was only just getting started.

Until then, thanks for listening.

Then we'll see you at Silverstone.