Will you ever see a better tin-top race than this?

[BDunnell]

OK, it's not a touring car race, but this forum seems like the most appropriate place for this.

I think this has to be the best race in deeply unpromising cars I've ever seen. It's the race segment of the 1983 BBC Rallysprint, which used to be an annual mixed-discipline contest between racing and rally drivers, on this occasion involving a field of horrible-sounding road-specification MG Maestros — the main protagonists are Nigel Mansell, John Watson, Tony Pond, Stig Blomqvist, Danny Sullivan and Jimmy McRae. For a 'fun' event in these decidedly average cars, the intensity of the competition is quite something...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_sS011854

[Iain]

Great video Ben. Just goes to show you don't need anything other than a rollcage and a racing harness to provide good racing. A quality driver line-up too.

[BDunnell]

A quality driver line-up too.

Indeed. Watching it, I was wondering what sort of a career Tony Pond might have had in touring cars had he, as was rumoured when it was known he was retiring from rallying at the end of 1986, decided to compete in the first WTCC. This, after all, was a man who competed spectacularly in some rounds of the 1983 BTCC in an MG Metro Turbo; then, in 1984, he took pole position ahead of the regulars on his first appearance in a works Rover Vitesse, and won his third 1984 BTCC race outright. I reckon he would have been outstanding in a Sierra Cosworth.

[VkmSpouge]

That was very good fun watching that video. I was thinking that MG Maestro must have been the worst car Nigel Mansell ever raced but then I remembered the 1995 McLaren.

Good old Murray too, "And it looks to me as if Watson is making a bit of a break..." very next corner and Watson is passed by two cars