Founded in 2010, the Irish Touring Car Championship has just entered its second year of competition. Founded by veteran racers Philip Burdock, Barry Rabbitt and Brian Sexton, the series was created to help get Irish saloon car racing back on its feet. Since its inception, the series has become hugely popular with those looking to get involved in motor racing on a budget.
The series is split into two main classes : Touring and Super Touring. Rather than divide the classes by power / weight / engine capacity, the classes are decided by driver skill level. This is enforced by a minimum lap time which if you exceed it by a certain margin, you can be either bumped up to the next class or penalised.
The regulations are pretty open with the main points being two wheel drive only and a maximum tyre width depending on the weight of your vehicle. For example, that is a competition ready rear wheel drive Impreza pictured above.
The series is obviously still quite young but even though it is only in its second season, everyone is taking things very, very seriously.
The amount of different marques competing is something else. You can have everything from Peugeots to Hondas, Subarus to Nissans, Minis to BMWs and Fords to Volkswagens battling it out in each race.
Although it has to be said that the most predominant make present it that of the big H.
Some of you may recognise this car as the former J's Racing Honda CRX. It's great to see the car is still getting used even its retirement from Japan.
The day is divided up with separate qualifying sessions and two races for either class during the same day. Rocking the prestigious number one for 2011 is 2010 champion Martin Treacy in his fabulous Westward Engineering prepared Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500.
I know some of you guys are big Corrado fans so you might appreciate Keith Campbell's example cocking a wheel entering Mazda corner.
The four exhausts might be a clue to what is hiding underneath the hood of this E36 compact. Engine swaps are allowed in ITCC so this E36 is running an E46 M3 engine.
The much over looked Peugeot 306 GTi-6 is a popular car amongst competitors.
Unfortunately for this car, it retired from race one in the Touring class in a pretty spectacular fashion. By apexing too aggressively / deep, the car clipped the high kerb and was flipped over onto its roof before sliding to a stop on its side. Thankfully the driver was unhurt and I'm sure he'll be back to fight another day.
Brian Fitzpatrick captured the 306's tumble on his in-car camera, mounted on-board his rather rapid EF Honda Civic. You can watch the clip here.
Quite a few of the EK chassis Civic are running 1.8 litre engines from what I can only speculate as being the B18C engine from the DC2 Integra Type R. Quite a potent package for not a lot of money.
An Integra leads from an S14 Silvia with the Honda taking eventual victory in the first Touring class race.
But the real moment of the morning's races came from the Super Touring class.
Having qualified second, Treacy fluffed the start of race one and was relegated to the back of the pack. From the moment he first passed my position I knew he was on an all or nothing pace.
Cutting through the grid he eventually got passed third placed Stephen Maher's E46 M3 engined compact …
… before moving up to second place by overtaking the K20 powered EK Civic of Philip Burdock.
That was as far as the Cosworth would get in race one as the former J's Racing CRX of Barry Rabbitt was long gone into the distance. The afternoon races however would contain even bigger battles, more surprises and another unfortunate off. Check back later for part two of our ITCC opening round coverage.
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Paddy McGrath
nice to see a fire-breathing dragon in the form of a Sierra Cosworth RS500
Paddy,
In the US, its popular for the Honda Challenge guys to run the 1.8L block from the non-vtec cars (they call those LS b-series motors), but instead with a vtec head on them. the stroke is longer in the non-vtec motors. they call this the LS-VTEC swap and its a very potent, with OEM reliability... for the most part. they say hondas cant do torque, and im not claiming 400cuin V8 tq numbers or anything, but the LS-VTEC swap definitely isnt slow.
nice coverage, i have an alignment rig just like that orange EK
js racing civic = mad tiiite boyeiiii
Brilliant Paddy. I love this type of circuit racing. NA is BEST!!! Go Honda!
Love ITCC even tho its tiny and unheard of. Its all about the diversity and the rather free rules and stock bodies.
Great stuff as always ..
Great coverage of what looks like a blast of a league! I'd love to see more coverage of grassroots racing like this. You already do that quite a bit, Paddy, so thanks for that!
... and Fitzpatrick's EF looks beautiful!
Great report paddy , keep up the good work
Nice meeting you
More of this series... I love grassroots racing and more so if its Honda dominated.. for now
I love, love, love stock car racing!!! Thanks for the coverage!
Honda FTW!
i would love to see more of this, especially details on the cars.
Great stuff Paddy. I left you a comment on Flickr about this event, really an entertaining series. Love the atmpsphere going on in the ITCC, those are some passionate people, doing this for passion and not (only) for the money.
Looking forward to see more of this kind of racing action!
Great write up there Paddy...
Can you explain the two formula cars in the background of the 3rd photo?
Yup, the ITCC shares a raceday with several other classes including Formula Vee and Formula Libre - Better shot of one of the Formula Libre cars : http://assets.dev.speedhunters.com/Images/Paddy%20McGrath/2011/Events/April/ITCC/IMG_5166.jpg
- Paddy
These are touring cars!!! Although DTM cars are very good looking, I'd rather see these race around.
@Weasel, so kind of like a mini-me swap?
@OP, great coverage. Need a desktop on that yellow Teg.