Arkas '08

[Northern Monkey]

Martyn Bell with Erkut for the new season - should be interesting!

http://www.crash.net/news_view.asp?id=159312&pid=0&cid=10&news=y

[Rusty]

Fantastic great news and 2 more confirmed for the Grid well done and good luck Erkut and Martyn......

[Marc W]

Excellent news that one of the nicest drivers on the gird will be reurning. Hope he can adjust to the car quickly and beat Erkut!

[VkmSpouge]

Nice that Martyn Bell is coming back, interesting he chose to link up with Erkut Kizilirmak at Arkas Racing. Good to see two Astra Sport Hatches racing this year.

[Les]

two I like in one team - should be good.

[Brooklands78]

two I like in one team - should be good.

Same here - for me, it's the best news of the season so far! Hopefully Erkut will build on the improvement he made last term and Martyn will quickly get the hang of the Astra (front wheel drive!) to be amongst the points. Good luck to both of them!

[BeeJ_UK]

So no return for Kelvin Burt then. That one came out of the blue.

[Allyc85]

I wasnt expecting this one but I think its a good move for Martyn. I just hope someone in the BTCC buys his BMW as it sounded sooo good!

[DazzlaF1]

I feel sorry for him in a way cos i think he really wanted to get funds to enter a more up to date BMW, but overall, im delighted for him, he's getting a drive in a car which i think on its day and in the right hands could still be a good competitive piece of kit.

Good luck martyn :up:

[PDS]

Martyn Bell is a canny operator.... I don't know if anyone else has twigged?

The original set-up for Arkas racing was to run the Astra Sportshatch for two full seasons then to up-grade to Vectra's in 2009!

Martyn will be sitting in a pretty good position for 2009!

Good luck Martyn!

[kmchow]

While he wanted to buy/race a E90 BMW, why didn't Martyn Bell just continue running his E46? OTOH, I'm guess maybe he was already overstretching his funds when he was racing the E46. Isn't racing a BTC car a step backwards.

[tisme]

As Erkut was finishing consistently higher than Martyn last season...

One can assume not!

[Allyc85]

While he wanted to buy/race a E90 BMW, why didn't Martyn Bell just continue running his E46? OTOH, I'm guess maybe he was already overstretching his funds when he was racing the E46. Isn't racing a BTC car a step backwards.

:) Read the comment above yours. it might be a step backwards for a year but then next year itl be a massive leap forwards when hes had a year to get used to a FWD touring car.

[Eurotech]

Being half British and half Turkish, this is my dream team.......

[Dickie L'Amour]

I think the still relatively new Astra Sport Hatch (it only started life in 2005, remember) with race prepation from ex-Triple Eight man Marvin Humphries's team and with technical backup from Triple Eight themselves and with a pretty quick team-mate to compare notes with and spur him on can only be a good thing for Martyn. Sure the Astra is of the old BTC spec car but they can still go for the independents championships (drivers and teams) which are what they realistically probably expect to show better in. Being realistic is very important after all. I'd predict several if not more top ten results for the pair of them (remember Erkut in his first proper season last year was twice in the points).

Good luck to Arkas. They could spring the odd big surprise if things just in front kick off...