The cold cloudy weather did not stop thousands of people attending Brands for the opening rounds of the 2001 Touring Car championship. Standing on south bank must have been bad because even my hardy family stayed in the car for a large portion of the day, but did they miss anything?

Race 1
The production cars. Thank heaven for these cars and teams. A brightly coloured packed field of very different cars with drivers who all wanted to do well. The report on exactly what happened is available elsewhere so this is it from a spectator's memory. Most spectacular crash was the Alfa coming off Paddock Hill bend, seeing it do two complete rolls before landing was impressive. Even better was the way the driver's door fell off allowing easy access, are Alfa going to include that facility on their road cars? Glad to see nobody was injured at all during the day. Most entertainment for a battle on track goes to 77 Tom Boardman's pink (yes - horrible but you could pick him out on the track) Peugeot 306Gti-6. Whenever you looked at this car he was fighting it out and either fending off or overtaking somebody. 10 out of 10 for entertainment. This is a car I will be watching out for in future. It is what we come to see.
The most overtaking prize goes to James Kaye who had to stop for removal of damaged bodywork after which he carved his way through the field to give a preview of what he would do in the feature race.
All in all a race to make it worth going!

Race 3 was a thin affair seven entrants only! It did not need a genius to work out that an Astra would win as Yvan Muller duly did . It was good to see Jason Plato push past on the start to take and hold second place, but there was no nail biting going on. For sure the cars looked and sounded beautiful ( David Pinkney's Alfa taking the prize there) but where are the manufacturers? Come on you chaps, we pay lots of money for your product, you can change the image of your vehicles by competing so where are you? Skoda are spending millions on a disastrous attempt at a World Rally Car. For a fraction of that they could gain serious respect by competing in the AA.com Touring Car series. All credit to Vauxhall for keeping the faith and Peugeot and Alfa for getting back into it. But where are Ford and Rover (yes I know they are due later but where have they been all these years, we might even have bought their cars.) Back to the racing. To put it in perspective the most watchable part of the race was the Alfa streaming smoke and coming to a stop in the pit lane exit. David Pinkney's Vectra racing showed -he tried to keep going to the bitter end. That never say die attitude may well work to his benefit eventually.

Race 6 The feature race
At least both classes were run together to provide some overtaking possibilities. The start was as expected with Yvan Muller setting off hotly pursued by Jason Plato and James Thompson. Phil Bennett showed his lack of experience initially by getting caught and passed by the bright yellow Peugeots. (Please find another colour to put on the cars, my daughter was all for ringing the style police to get them arrested for assaulting the eyeballs!)
The bosses at Vauxhall must have been heartened when they saw the fight back he made to take his true place on the track, a long way behind his team mates but making it first four to Vauxhall, for a while at least. By the way Phil were you responsible for the tyre marks that mysteriously appeared on the side of Matt Neal's car? Who ever it was thankyou, that close quarter combat is the true spirit of Touring Cars.
The exit of Yvan's Astra was unfortunate but it did leave it open for the best battle of the afternoon between Jason Plato and James Thompson with Jason seeming down on power it was thrilling to watch him finally muscle his way past the egg.com sponsored car if only briefly. This is what we want to see.
The production cars were having a fine battle of their own and James Kaye finally showed his true speed by pulling away from all the others in his class. James I do believe this is your year, good luck you have worked hard for it. Mind you there are a lot of Peugeot 306s out there trying to spoil your fun so watch out! After settling down at home later I watched a video of the '95 championship. A packed field fighting it out with no holds barred - great entertainment. I really hope that this sort of frantic racing can be reproduced soon because that is where the future of touring cars lies. Giving the public fast action packed racing .

Here's looking forward to Thruxton.

Ken Jones