![1996AudiQuattroA4](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/1996AudiQuattroA4.jpg)
Super Touring, Class 2 or Class II was a
motor racing
Motorsport, motorsports or motor sport is a global term used to encompass the group of competitive sporting events which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles. The terminology can also be used to describe forms of competition of tw ...
Touring Cars category defined by the
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA; en, International Automobile Federation) is an association established on 20 June 1904 to represent the interests of motoring organisations and motor car users. It is the governing body for ...
(FIA) for national
touring car racing
Touring car racing is a motorsport road racing competition with heavily modified road-going cars. It has both similarities to and significant differences from stock car racing, which is popular in the United States.
While the cars do not mov ...
in 1993. It was based on the "2 litre Touring Car Formula" created for the
British Touring Car Championship
The Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing series held each year in the United Kingdom, currently organised and administered by TOCA. It was established in 1958 as the British Saloon Car Championship and was renamed as ...
(BTCC) in 1990. The FIA organised a
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
for the category each year from 1993 to 1995, and adopted the term "Super Tourer" from 1995.
Super Touring replaced
Group A
Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived vehicles intended for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles ...
as the norm in nearly every touring car championship across the world, but escalating costs, and the withdrawal of
works team
A works team (sometimes factory team, company team) is a sports team that is financed and run by a manufacturer or other business. Sometimes, works teams contain or are entirely made up of employees of the supporting company.
Association footb ...
s caused the category to collapse in the late 1990s. The cars looked like regular production road cars, while expensive changes had to be made to provide space for racing tyres inside the standard wheel arches.
An example for this was the German
Super Tourenwagen Cup
The Super Tourenwagen Cup, or German Supertouring Championship, was a touring car racing series held between 1994 and 1999 in Germany.
The championship was established when BMW and Audi both left the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM) in 19 ...
(STW) series, which ran from 1994 to 1999, filling a void left after the end of the 2.5-litre
V6-powered
Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft
The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM) was a touring car racing series held from 1984 to 1996. Originally based in Germany, it held additional rounds elsewhere in Europe and later worldwide.
The original DTM had resumed racing with producti ...
(DTM) in 1996. In 2000, the
Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters
The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM, German Touring Car Masters) is a grand touring car series sanctioned by ITR e.V. who have been affiliated to the DMSB- FIA since 1984. The series is based in Germany, with rounds elsewhere in Europe. The s ...
(keeping the 'DTM' acronym) resumed with 4.0-litre
V8-powered cars.
Regulations
![Alain Menu 1996 BTCC cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Alain_Menu_1996_BTCC_cropped.jpg)
The Super Touring cars were required to be a minimum of in length, with four doors, effectively requiring a small family
saloon car
A sedan or saloon (British English) is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo.
The first recorded use of the word "sedan" in reference to an automobile body occurred in 19 ...
as a minimum. No more than 2 litres engine capacity, or six
cylinders were permitted, and the engine was required to be naturally aspirated. Only two wheels could be driven and steered. For
homologation, initially at least 2500 units of the model used must have been produced. In 1995, in a bid to counter the increasing numbers of homologation specials this number was increased to at least 25,000 units.
BTCC Technical Regulations
There was no restriction on body size and doors until 1993, when it was changed to only allow cars with a minimum of four doors and no smaller than the Euro NCAP
The European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) is a European voluntary car safety performance assessment programme (i.e. a New Car Assessment Program) based in Leuven (Belgium) formed in 1996, with the first results released in Februa ...
'Small Family Car
The C-segment is the 3rd category of the European segments for passenger cars and is described as "medium cars". It is equivalent to the Euro NCAP "small family car" size class, and the compact car category in the United States.
In 2011, the C ...
' class, although ' Large Family Car' tends to dominate the category. Until 1995, teams were only permitted to fit aerodynamic device that were available through dealers, but that changed when, in 1994 BTCC season, Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury car manufacturer and a subsidiary of Stellantis. The company was founded on 24 June 1910, in Milan, Italy. "Alfa" is an acronym of its founding name, "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili." "A ...
entered a 155
Year 155 ( CLV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Severus and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 908 ''Ab urbe condita'' ...
with Gabriele Tarquini
Gabriele Tarquini (born 2 March 1962) is an Italian racing driver. He participated in 78 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on May 3, 1987. He scored a single championship point, and holds the record for the most failed attempts to qualify. He h ...
and Giampiero Simoni
Giampiero Simoni (born 12 September 1969 in Porto San Giorgio) is an Italian former racing driver who made his name in Touring Car racing.
Racing career
His racing career started in karting, becoming world kart champion in 1987. In 1990 he en ...
as drivers. The car had a front spoiler with a bottom piece that could be unscrewed and moved forward, acting as a splitter, and a rear spoiler with a pair of extensions, giving the car more downforce. When Alfa Romeo won the first five rounds, Ford, supported by Vauxhall, made a complaint to the race stewards. TOCA soon decided the aero devices were illegal and Alfa Romeo were stripped of the points they earned at Snetterton and Silverstone (although this decision was later reversed by appeal) and in return, walked out from the Oulton Park race. After this point, Alfa were forced to run their spoilers in the retracted position (the position in which the spoilers were fitted on the road going version, the Alfa 155 Silverstone – of which only 2,500 cars were homologated to allow the use of the aerodynamic devices and higher rev limits for a 1.8-litre car – though the road car was sold with two unfitted spoiler extension brackets). In the meantime, Renault and BMW responded by introducing their own limited edition road cars (Laguna Airflow and 318is, respectively) to enable them to run with oversized aerodynamic aids; Renault would win the Oulton Park race that Alfa Romeo had walked out. Soon after that, the FIA changed the regulation in all series to increase minimum number of produced road cars for homologation to 25,000, and allowing cars to only use non-production aerodynamic devices with a restricted size. Restrictions varied depending on body type, with Volvo
The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...
having to revert from the 850 Estate to their four-door saloon model the following season when they found themselves to be disadvantaged by the new rules. In the Italian Supertourismo category, teams entered extended spoilers without complaints.
Some series however, would change the rules to suit crowd demands, and competition from rival series, one example, was the Japanese Touring Car Championship
The Japanese Touring Car Championship (abbr: 1985–1993: JTC, 1994–1998: JTCC, officially known as All Japan Touring Car Championship, ja, 全日本ツーリングカー選手権, link=no), was a former touring car racing series held in Japan. ...
(JTCC), which made increases to body width and exhaust noise while restricting front aerodynamic devices in 1997 (which allowed Toyota to use the larger Toyota Chaser
The Toyota Chaser is a mid-size car produced by Toyota in Japan. Most Chasers are four-door sedans and hardtop sedans; a two-door hardtop coupé was available on the first generation only. It was introduced on the 1976 Toyota Corona Mark II pla ...
); it ultimately backfired when Nissan and Honda left the series at the end of season, leaving Toyota as the only manufacturer that competed. In 1999, a new formula using spaceframe cars came to nothing, and the series was abandoned altogether, as by then Japan's big three all had works entries in the then-JGTC
Super GT (stylized as SUPER GT) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Launched as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC or the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It is ...
.
In Australia, the series began in 1993 when the Group A regulations for the Australian Touring Car Championship
The Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) is a touring car racing award held in Australia since 1960. The series itself is no longer contested, but the title lives on, with the winner of the Repco Supercars Championship awarded the trophy ...
series was replaced by Supercars Group 3A Formula (known as V8 Supercars from 1997 onwards) and Super Touring. The advent of a new management structure and telecast arrangement for V8 Supercars put them in conflict with Bathurst 1000
The Bathurst 1000 (formally known as the Repco Bathurst 1000) is a touring car race held annually on the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. It is currently run as part of the Supercars Championship, the most rece ...
organisers. Super Touring were offered the chance to compete at Bathurst after race organisers could not come to terms with V8 Supercars. Bathurst City Council and V8 Supercars came to a separate arrangement to host their own breakaway "Australian 1000 Classic" race. Super Touring did not become a viable option, and the third and final race was transformed into a motorsport carnival, with several categories attending and the Super Touring event halved to , before collapsing in the aftermath of the 1999 race. In 2000, in the absence of a rival, the V8 Supercars event took up the Bathurst 1000 name.
During the Super Touring's long run, the category suffered two fatal accidents. In 1995, Gregg Hansford
Gregory John "Gregg" Hansford (8 April 1952 – 5 March 1995) was an Australian professional motorcycle and touring car racer. He competed in the FIM Grand Prix motorcycle racing world championships from 1978 to 1981 and in Australian to ...
at Phillip Island
Phillip Island ( Boonwurrung: ''Corriong'', ''Worne'' or ''Millowl'') is an Australian island about south-southeast of Melbourne, Victoria. The island is named after Governor Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, by explore ...
, and Kieth O'dor
Kieth O'dor (5 April 1962 – 11 September 1995) was a British racing driver, born in Salisbury, who competed primarily in touring cars. He scored Nissan's first win during the super touring era in both the British Touring Car Championship and ...
at Avus
The Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße ('Automobile traffic and training road'), known as AVUS, is a public road in Berlin, Germany. Opened in 1921, it was also used as a motor racing circuit until 1998. Today, the AVUS forms the northern p ...
, were involved in fatal accidents as a result of a broken neck caused by their cars' being hit side-on. Soon after, rollcages in competition cars with built-in side impact bars, and seats with head restraints on the side would become mandatory.
One reason for Super Touring's demise was the cost of preparing a car for competition. In 1990, a Vauxhall Cavalier
The Vauxhall Cavalier was a large family car that was sold primarily in the UK by Vauxhall from 1975 to 1995. It was based on a succession of Opel designs throughout its production life, during which it was built in three incarnations. The fir ...
cost £60,000. By the later part of the 90's, a similar car with more sophisticated aerodynamics device and telemetry cost £250,000.
The later World Touring Car Championship
The FIA World Touring Car Championship was an international touring car championship promoted by Eurosport Events and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It has had several different incarnations, including a sin ...
regulations are very inspired by the old series, with production-based four-door saloons
Saloon may refer to:
Buildings and businesses
* One of the bars in a traditional British pub
* An alternative name for a bar (establishment)
* Western saloon, a historical style of American bar
* The Saloon, a bar and music venue in San Francisc ...
powered by 2.0-litre engines. Wider wheel arches are allowed, which makes the cars look more spectacular. Cars under S2000 regulations are cheaper than their predecessors, to which serious modifications had to be made to allow for wider tires, lower ride height and different suspension – as the width of Super 2000 cars does not need to be the same as that of the production models, development costs can be kept lower. Various national championships use similar rules.
Although it bears no resemblance to its predecessor, the "Super Touring" name was retained by the Championnat de France de Supertourisme for their 3.0-litre tube frame cars.
List of championships that used the Super Touring formula
List of Supertouring homologated cars
See also
* Group 2 (racing)
The Group 2 racing class referred to regulations for cars in touring car racing and rallying, as regulated by the FIA. Group 2 was replaced by Group A in 1982.
The FIA established Appendix J regulations for Touring and GT cars for 1954 and the t ...
* Group A
Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived vehicles intended for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles ...
* Class 1 Touring Cars Class 1 Touring Cars refers to two generations of prototype silhouette-style touring car regulations employed by the FIA.
First generation (1993-1996)
The first generation was a production-based formula introduced in 1993 along with Class 2 Tourin ...
* Super 2000
* Diesel 2000
Diesel 2000 is an FIA circuit racing classification for modified production based touring cars using turbodiesel engines.
Like its counterpart, Super 2000, the category is open to large-scale series production touring cars modified by a kit. Car ...
References
External links
SuperTouring.co.uk
– history of Super Touring
SuperTouringRegister.com
– archive of cars built to Super Touring regulations
SuperTouringCars.net
– Super Touring homepage with cars, facts, links, news, parts, photos
* ttp://www.Supertcc.com Supertcc.com– HSCC Super Touring Car Championship
{{Super Touring championships
Racing car classes
Touring car racing
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile
Motorsport categories in Australia