1987 Dunlop RAC British Touring Car Championship - Discussion & Results

[KA]

Originally Posted by Jesper OH

I think the primary problem of the '86 Grice VK to '87 Docking VK is differing reports of what happened pre and post Hockenheim '86. Some reports suggests that the car was a write off at Hockenheim, but it seems that the car was rebuild and put into action later in the '86 ETCC, although described as not being as crisp as before. It then stayed at its 1986 base at Alan Docking Racing in Britain to end up as the '87 BTCC car of Mike O'Brien. That is my current understanding.

Jesper

After the Hockenheim shunt (13th April), AFAIK Grice seems to have missed 4 rounds, Misano, Anderstorp, Brno and Zeltweg, before returning at the Nurburgring in July- I think he then ran the rest of the season. Plenty of window of opportunity there for anything from rebuilding/reshelling the original car to Les Small's crew building up a new car/shell in Australia and shipping it to Europe...

Originally Posted by Tim Wilkinson

Complicated by a later season preview in the usually reliable Autosport saying that O'Brien tested one Commodore and then raced another - the tested car remaining un-raced in BTCC.

Tim, any idea what date that preview is, as knowing the timescale for that might shed some further light on the question?

If Autosport had got this right, then that seems to suggest either that Grice/Roadways/Alan Docking both had access to a second car and repaired/rebuilt the original....

....unless, of course, the other car O'Brien tested was one of the HDT pair- we know that at least one of those must have been in the UK/Europe as late as Sept '86 for Clenand/Woodman to use it at the TT. I guess one of the keys to answering this is knowing roughly when the deal for O'Brien to run the VK was done...