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Top 7 are all in the 1:17’s! Both Jason and Darren are racing with 36kgs of ballast.
Jason Plato and Darren Turner will start Round 10 of the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship tomorrow at Thruxton from 6th and 7th places on the grid respectively, after struggling to find the perfect set-up for the SEAT Sport UK Leon TDI in qualifying. Continue reading ‘BTCC: Jason Plato and Darren Turner place 6th and 7th in qualifying’
Last year Jason Plato arrived at the Thruxton racing circuit in Hampshire for the final three rounds of the MSA British Touring Car Championship defending a nine point lead in the Drivers’ standings. Despite racing with horrific burns sustained in a filming accident just days before, the SEAT Sport UK driver finished 2nd in the first two races to start the final race of the season one point ahead of Fabrizio Giovanardi. Jason finished 4th, two places behind the Italian, to miss out on the title by three points.
This time, it’s Jason who is behind in the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship and on the ascendancy. Continue reading ‘BTCC: Jason Plato returns to Thruxton as the BTCC hunter’
This weekend kicks off with a bang in the racing arena! We have 3 starts to the season with the DTM, Formula 3 and the VW Polo Cup. BTCC starts its second round at Rockingham.
We will be covering all three throughout the day. We have not received any reply to the DTM concerning their US live coverage. The DTM.tv english version, still, says coming soon. This is what we think they maybe using as the live coverage effort.
With that said, DTM has launched a new effort online and its a great one! You can read about it here. The video is top notch and the playback is smooth. We hope the live experience will be the same.
Below are the time tables and links to all 4 races. Keep coming back or grab our RSS feed to stay on top of all the news and gallery launches. *DTM, Formula 3 and VW Polo Cup all take place at Hockenheim.
DTM:
BTCC:
Formula 3:
VW Polo Cup:
Looks like we are off to another year of door to door banging racing as less than a second covered the top 14 drivers. If you’ve ever watched one of these races, you’ll know. That reminds us, we have a video that needs to be uploaded. Look for it in a bit!
Jason Plato on his way to 4th in qualifyingRising star Mat Jackson has qualified on pole position for tomorrow’s opening round of the 2008 HiQ MSA British Touring car Championship at Brands Hatch.
On a drying track Jackson, driving a BMW 320si for the BMW Dealer UK Team, timed his run to perfection in the final minutes of this afternoon’s qualifying session to achieve the first pole of his BTCC career with a time of 49.348s.
Second and third fastest were reigning champion Fabrizio Giovanardi (Vauxhall Vectra VXR) and Team RAC driver Colin Turkington (BMW 320si).
Jason Plato qualified SEAT’s new diesel-powered Leon fourth on its debut as less than a second covered the fastest 14 drivers.
Jackson, aged 26 from Henley-in-Arden, said: “That was tough… 25 cars on a 1.2 mile circuit and only one dry line to take made things really hectic at the end.
“I could see the others were getting faster all the time and we all had to go off-line to pick our way past a few slower cars. I guess I just found a bigger gap than everyone else.
“But it’s a great start to our 2008 season and hopefully the BMW’s rear-wheel-drive will give me the start I need tomorrow. The start will be important because beating the likes of Fabrizio, Turkington and Plato for 24 laps is going to be very hard work.”
Leading qualifying times:
Pos./Driver (NAT), Team/Car, Time
1. Mat Jackson (GBR), BMW Dealer Team UK/BMW 320si, 49.348s
2. Fabrizio Giovanardi (ITA), VX Racing/Vauxhall Vectra VXR, + 0.019s
3. Colin Turkington (GBR), Team RAC/BMW 320si, + 0.123s
4. Jason Plato (GBR), SEAT Sport UK/SEAT Leon TDI, + 0.163s
5. Tom Onslow-Cole (GBR), VX Racing/Vauxhall Vectra VXR, + 0.217s
6. Darren Turner (GBR), SEAT Sport UK/SEAT Leon TDI, + 0.284s
7. Gordon Shedden (GBR), Team Halfords/Honda Civic, + 0.403s
8. Steven Kane (GBR), Motorbase/BMW 320si, + 0.419s
9. Tom Chilton (GBR), Team Halfords/Honda Civic, + 0.564s
10. Matt Neal (GBR), VX Racing/Vauxhall Vectra VXR, + 0.610s
- HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship
It is going to be a packed weekend on both side of the world. The BTCC will kick off tomorrow and we will be keeping a close eye on SEATS TDI effort with Jason Plato and Darren Turner at the controls. The SEAT Leon TDI’s have super strong in the WTCC.
Qualifying takes place tomorrow at 15.40 – 16.10 (3:30pm Standard time; 11:30am DST, New York)
View weekend schedule here (PDF)
On our side of the pond, we have the second race of the Rolex Sports Car series at the GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami. We are not huge fans of the Daytona Prototypes but htere are a few Porsche powered cars. During yesterdays practice we saw one of the Brumos Racing / Porsche Riley in second.
We love the GT class where we saw the Top 6 divided by three Porsche GT3 Cup’s and three Pontiac GXP.R’s.
Qualifying takes palce today:
Racing history will be made at Brands Hatch on Sunday 30th March, when SEAT becomes the first manufacturer to race a diesel-engined car in the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship. Jason Plato and Darren Turner will drive a pair of Holiday Inn supported SEAT Leon TDIs, as the SEAT Sport UK team embarks on a new diesel-powered phase of its motorsport programme.
Brands Hatch was the venue for the first BTCC race back in 1958, and while the series celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, SEAT Sport UK is starting its fifth racing season. Since joining the BTCC in 2004, SEAT Sport UK has contested 120 races, winning 33, recording 83 podiums and scoring 2,245 Manufacturers’ points. It won the BTCC Manufacturers’ title in 2006 and was crowned Teams’ Champions in 2007. The introduction of the Leon TDI is the biggest pre-season change the team has ever undertaken, and whilst the car has been successful in the FIA World Touring Car Championship since its debut mid-way through last year, the different surfaces and layouts of the UK circuits makes this a big technical and sporting challenge for the Northampton-based team. Continue reading ‘SEAT Leon TDI to make history at 2008 BTCC opener’
This is a bit later than we wanted. March is around the corner! 12 Hours of Sebring is now 16 days away!
Completed! but now we need to add the Le Mans Series! We have but two to finish, the Grand Am Rolex Series and the KONI Challenge Series. They really don’t get going until May but it should be up by evening.
These will be updated as needed. Track, dates, times, PDF schedules and more (varies).
We are also working with our creative, STRENGTH interactive, on a special mobile concept! Stay tuned on that one!
Head on over to the Calendar’s page and get your dates in place. Set your TiVo’s! Don’t forget to show your significant other!
Technorati Tags: American Le Mans Series, British Touring Car Championship, DTM, Formula 3, Porsche Mobil1 Supercup, Rolex 24 at Daytona, SPEED World Challenge GT Championship, Twelve Hours of Sebring, Volkswagen Racing Cup, Volkswagen TDI Cup, World Touring Car Championship
We’ve been putting together calendars from all racing series that we watch and repot on. This will include the American Le Mans Series, DTM, WTCC, BTCC, Le Mans, FIA GT, Speed World Challenge, Volkswagen Racing Cup, Volkswagen Polo Cup, Formula 3 Euro Series, Grand Am and more. Dakar was in but…
There are some good solutions out there but in the end we came back to Google Calendar. We will also set direct links up to the iCal (.ics) file. Here is a list of apps that support iCal format. In the end Google is web based and you can have access to it from wherever.
Click on over to our 2008 Racing Calendar page. Right now we have ALMS, BTCC, WTCC and the DTM program schedule on SpeedTV (last race Feb. 2)
Enjoy! Oh and if you have a series you’d like to see, let us know!
Technorati Tags: American Le Mans, DTM, Formula 3, German Touring Cars, SpeedTV, Volkswagen Motorsport, Volkswagen Racing Cup, World Touring Car Championship, British Touring Car Championship
Nice work from the boys at SEAT!
Jason Plato continues to lead the BTCC after a bruising race meeting at Snetterton. But only the toughest survive in touring car racing, and having been hit off the track at the first corner of the opening race, Jason recovered from 17th to finish 8th, scored a podium in Race 2 and challenged for the lead in Race 3 before finishing 4th. His SEAT Leon showed the battle scars of a hard-fought day but, most importantly, Jason maintains his lead in the Drivers’ standings.
Darren Turner ran as high as 2nd and scored three top 10 results, but also ended the day with a war-damaged Leon. Their combined points tally over the weekend has nevertheless enabled SEAT Sport UK to maintain its lead in the BTCC Teams’ Championship and keeps SEAT’s strong challenge alive in the Manufacturers’ table.
A monster start-line crash in the second Blaupunkt SEAT Cupra Championship race eliminated seven cars. That race was won by Carl Breeze, but there appears to be no stopping Jonathan Adam’s title charge, as he won the first race to extend his New Leon Class lead. Ian Churchill and Harry Vaulkhard shared victories in the Leon Cupra R class.
In a rainy Sweden, the diesel-powered Leon made a very encouraging WTCC debut, with Yvan Muller scoring points on the SEAT Sport Leon TDI’s maiden race. After qualifying on pole, Tiago Monterio finished 2nd.
Technorati Tags: BTCC, British Touring Car, SEAT, Jason Plato, oneighturbo
Jason Plato leads series
Darren Turner scored his first Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship victory at Croft today by leading home team-mate Jason Plato in a fantastic one-two finish in SEAT Sport UK’s 101st BTCC race. The achievement is all the more remarkable as it was Darren’s first appearance at the North Yorkshire circuit since 1998.
The result was the highlight of an exciting race day, in which both SEAT Leon drivers scored points in all three races to maintain the team’s impressive record at Croft. It enabled SEAT to out-score Vauxhall and close the gap in the BTCC Manufacturers’ standings, while SEAT Sport UK is now just three points behind VX Racing in the Teams’ Championship.
A gritty performance by Jason saw him finish 7th, 2nd and 8th in the three races to maintain his lead in the BTCC Drivers’ standings.
