Subaru Australia wants to go Touring Car racing

[Livewireshock]

Interesting to see Subaru Australia promoting the possibility of introducing a new Touring Car championship, based loosely on the S2000 regulations used in BTCC & WTCC. Currently Subaru are only involved in a scattered array of events from Tarmac Rallying & road racing like the Bathurst 12 hour race with a car based on Gp. N specs. There has also been a presence in the Australian Production Car Championship.

Subaru are currently not involved in S2000 touring car racing so it raises plenty of questions. All to try & break the strangle hold V8Supercars have in Australia. After the downfall of 2L Touring Cars, it is hard to see a new championship being created but might change if WTCC or Asian championships might be involved as well in some way with a local race or drivers swaps.

The big thing in my head is that it seems clear that the ARC is well off their radar, even to the extent of creating a totally new championship.

[Rollo]

Interesting to see Subaru Australia promoting the possibility of introducing a new Touring Car championship, based loosely on the S2000 regulations used in BTCC & WTCC. Currently Subaru are only involved in a scattered array of events from Tarmac Rallying & road racing like the Bathurst 12 hour race with a car based on Gp. N specs. There has also been a presence in the Australian Production Car Championship.

With regards the Bathurst 12hr, when I was up there on the weekend I was talking to one of the crew cheifs who told me that these actually were their ARC cars and because of the regulations, they were already fully compliant.

http://v8central.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=83

http://www.subarumotorsport.com.au/bathurst12.html

The team was using this as a shakedown for their new cars, essentially treating this as a 12hr test session. I had which chassis numbers they were written down somewhere but I lost that bit of paper.

What was interesting was that going up mountain straight, the Scoobs would surrender their lead very easily, content on running their own times. I'm sure that this in part contributed to them being quite consistent all day and for the most part keeping out of trouble - 2 cars unbent after 12hrs is an acheivement.

[Livewireshock]

I knew the Bathurst cars were their former ARC Group N cars. The comments that Subaru Australia were making was for a totally new championship based on Super 2000 Touring Car rules as opposed to Super 2000 Rally Car rules. This is what is in use in the WTCC & BTCC. Maybe calling for a local round of the WTCC.

The S2000 car would be much faster than the production based cars used in Group N. Subaru currently does not have a S2000 car they can call on,