RE: Rouse vs. Soper: Time For Tea?
Wednesday 5th February 2014
Yes, BTCC footage is regular fodder as a Time For Tea? but today it seems more relevant than ever; Touring Car Legends starts tonight, and Fabrizio Giovanardi is returning for this year's championship.
Rouse vs. Soper: Time For Tea?
Touring Car Legends starts tonight, so here's a quick vid to get you in the mood
Having covered the early years, the Super Touring era and more recent BTCC exploits in previous videos, something from the 80s was required. And if it's 80s BTCC, it has to be Sierra Cosworth.
As luck would have it, this video features two of the key protagonists in 80s touring cars, Steve Soper and Andy Rouse. Both in RS500s (with fantastic liveries too), they were apparently never more than a few metres from each other throughout the season. It's great racing to watch, close and fast but fair too. Furthermore, oversteer is never far away in 500hp Sierras!
What Soper seems to gain on the brakes Rouse takes back down the straights. It's an absorbing watch, all the more so seeing backmarkers in Escort XR3s and Golf GTIs. Superb.
Watch it here.
[Image: LAT]
Discussion
clubsportguy said:
Proper Touring cars that looked like the car you could buy out of the local dealership showroom!! Unlike the current so called Touring cars with big wings/spoilers and looklike a boy racers w*t dream !!
TC have evolved over the years to get professional drivers interested and involved. Make the cars as basic as they used to be and suddenly you'll find it's lacking in fresh talent - who would want to use it as a stepping stone to GT3/GTE/LMP etc with cars that were stuck in the stone-age?If you want to see cars that are mostly showroom attainable then go watch some club motorsport, which is in rude health in the UK. That, or something like the Ginetta championships etc (where you can actually buy the cars they race straight from the factory).
supertouring said:
Then Dick Johnson from Oz came over in his for the ETC round at Silverstone and showed them both how to do it.
He didnt win the race though did he (and the eggenberger cars were just as quick as DJR at Bathurst in 88 and 89) I had to go search for the information, as I was sure that only Soper got the better of rouse that year (and is it turns out, another eggenberger driver got the better of rouse in the final round also)Quoted from tentenths
[quote]Dick Johnson took his car to Silverstone in 1988 for the TT at Silverstone to share with John Bowe, qualifying on pole infront of the Eggenberger cars and the Rouse car. Led the race until the first pitstop where they fell behind, and were catching back up when more trouble intervened at the second pitstop. They eventually finished 21st.
It was this that led to the claim DJR had the worlds fastest Sierra's, along with setting pole for Bathurst in 1988. The Eggenberger-prepared Moffat Sierra did set fastest lap in the Top 10 at Bathurst in 1988 (didn't count for the grid that year) with Klaus Neidzweidz, and did so again in 1990. It was a real shame there weren't very many DJR vs Eggenberger vs Rouse battles.
KrisP said:
supertouring said:
Then Dick Johnson from Oz came over in his for the ETC round at Silverstone and showed them both how to do it.
He didnt win the race though did he (and the eggenberger cars were just as quick as DJR at Bathurst in 88 and 89) I had to go search for the information, as I was sure that only Soper got the better of rouse that year (and is it turns out, another eggenberger driver got the better of rouse in the final round also)Quoted from tentenths
[quote]Dick Johnson took his car to Silverstone in 1988 for the TT at Silverstone to share with John Bowe, qualifying on pole infront of the Eggenberger cars and the Rouse car. Led the race until the first pitstop where they fell behind, and were catching back up when more trouble intervened at the second pitstop. They eventually finished 21st.
It was this that led to the claim DJR had the worlds fastest Sierra's, along with setting pole for Bathurst in 1988. The Eggenberger-prepared Moffat Sierra did set fastest lap in the Top 10 at Bathurst in 1988 (didn't count for the grid that year) with Klaus Neidzweidz, and did so again in 1990. It was a real shame there weren't very many DJR vs Eggenberger vs Rouse battles.
supertouring said:
Then Dick Johnson from Oz came over in his for the ETC round at Silverstone and showed them both how to do it.
supertouring said:
Correct, he did not. But he did take pole and lead the race till an overheating problem put him out.
Surely then they showed him how to do it, that is, finishing the race. A quick car is no good if it doesn't finish!clubsportguy said:
Proper Touring cars that looked like the car you could buy out of the local dealership showroom!! Unlike the current so called Touring cars with big wings/spoilers and looklike a boy racers w*t dream !!
Entirely agree. If I was watching that in 1988 and had the means, I would have been down the local Ford dealer and ordered a Cosworth. As I am a Soper man, it would have been in black!Motor racing should be about providing that link between track and road which is sorely missing these days. And one of the many reasons I am totally uninterested in F1.
Do any of the manufacturers competing in Touring cars today actually see an increase in sales because of this? I would very much doubt it.
rallycross said:
supertouring said:
Correct, he did not. But he did take pole and lead the race till an overheating problem put him out.
Rouse could win races becasue he prepared his cars the best, even v's the works teams (plus he is a great touring car driver).Still at the top of my motorsport list.
Eggenberger built his cars to endurance spec, so they could last the distance in the long european races, where as the Rouse car was sprint spec, for the shorter UK races, thats the difference your seeing in that battle.
DJR had cracked the codes for the Bosch ECU at the Silverstone TT in 88 unlike the other teams running them, plus he liked to tinker with his T4 turbo, then again so did Rouse which all came out later on.
DJR had cracked the codes for the Bosch ECU at the Silverstone TT in 88 unlike the other teams running them, plus he liked to tinker with his T4 turbo, then again so did Rouse which all came out later on.
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