BTCC rounds 3 and 4

[Tom Nas <tnas@euronet.nl>]

Hi all,

Last night, I watched the report of BTCC rounds 3 and 4 from Silverstone on
EuroSport. For some reasons, I've managed to miss the previous races, so I
can only comment on what I've seen so far. Looks like Audi's out of the
race this season. Commentator said something about 4WD cars now carrying a
95 kg weight penalty, but is that really all there is? Biela as well as
Bintcliffe struggled to get past tenth place, and never really figured in
this race. In round four, things got even worse for Audi: Biela retired
(from the sound of it, engine trouble) and Bintcliffe got in a tangle with
David Leslie's (?) Nissan Primera, totaling both cars- a complete
retirement for Audi. I haven't memorized the exact position, but Audi's in
about tenth place overall now. Very embarrassing for the car with a '1' on
its doors...

What's up? Does anyone have an opinion on this? Is AudiSport still
developing the engine to give more power and overcome this weight penalty?
Does anyone think that the very quick Renaults (Alain Menu winning his
second race) can be beaten? The way Menu gained on a Ford Mondeo was
embarrassing for Ford- the Mondeo looked like it was stationary. IMO, we
can only hope for a very wet race at Thruxton next weekend to make the
Audis show their advantage!

Tom

 _______________________________________________________________________
 Tom Nas                                          Zeist, The Netherlands
 tnas@euronet.nl
1988 Audi 80 1.8S, Tizianrot metallic, 210,000km

        Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it,
       misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
                                            -- Groucho Marx