german touringcar racing

[stew]

i know there not porsche ,but has anyone seen the racing on speedvision. i think it is some of the best racing i've seen in a while. i whish they would scrap like that in alms. what do you think?

[Reg]

I only saw it for a minute...but Jean Alesi is driving there next year!

[911pcars]

I think this was the same series up until a few years ago, cars like the Mercedes Benz CLK (?) had the most advanced technology in racing, far surpassing that found even in F1. This included turbocharged race engines, carbon fibre chassis/body, active suspension, throttle by wire, transponder control of car systems from the pits, exotic fuel, the whole nine yards, many things that were disallowed in F1. The MB even had an active sliding weight under the chassis to change weight distribution for whatever circumstance.

Ultimately, the series changed due to escalating costs and the refusal of other manufacturers to cough up the megabucks to remain competitive.

...or maybe I'm mixing this up with some other German touring car series. Oh well.

Sherwood Lee
http://members.rennlist.org/911pcars

[andyu911]

Speaking of Speedvision, there's Australian Super V8 road racing too. Pretty interesting to see some V8 front drive race car. DTM is great. I think Bimmer used to race in that series too. Anything is better than "NASCAR Tech" that kind of stuff.

Andy
'87 Carrera

[jluetjen]

I agree, I love watching DTM, V8 Super Touring and such on Speedvision, but unfortunately both of those series seem to suffer from poor editing. Most of the on-camera time seems to show cars running in line and the passes for position seem to happen off-camera or they make so many cuts that I forget who's where. The British Touring Cars (BTCC) on the other hand has some great coverage and some great racing, especially back in the the "Production field". Makes me almost want to buy back my FWD ITB race car and start racing that again!

It looks like Speedvision also will have the European FIA Endurance up in a few weeks. That should have a lot of Porsches in it.

- John

[cegerer]

That's one good thing about Speedvision. In these slow winter months, they show tapes of last season's Euro road racing. The current DTM and British Touring Cars are really toned down compared to 4-5 years ago (although the racing is still pretty good!). It's now kind of a spec-series, similar in some respects to - gulp! - NASCAR. It's similar to what happened with the Gruppe B rally cars and the CanAm before that - the technology got so advanced that nobody could afford to compete anymore.

[rstoll]

Just think of all the NASCAR folks who will be exposed to some real racing. Instead of restrictor plate, cookie cutter racing they might see a little competition with the variety that Speedvision offers.