Four-time British Touring Car Championship title winner Colin Turkington is to make his Super Touring debut at Brands Hatch at the end of this month.
The Northern Irishman will race a Vauxhall Vectra at the Super Touring Power event on 28-29 June – and, surprisingly, it will be the first time he has ever driven a car from the BTCC’s halcyon era.
Turkington contested the Ford Fiesta championship on the BTCC support package, for which the prize was traditionally a test drive in one of the marque’s Mondeo Super Tourers.
But by the time he won the Fiesta title in 2001 to launch himself into the BTCC the following season, Ford had pulled out and the Super Touring era was over.
The Vectra is the ex-Jason Plato machine from the 2000 season that is campaigned regularly by mid-2000s BTCC privateer Jason Hughes.
Turkington will race it in the two races on the Saturday, which both take place on the Grand Prix circuit, while Hughes drives his MG ZS from the BTC Touring era.
They will then swap mounts for the Sunday races on the Indy circuit, for what will be Turkington’s first race in the MG since March 2022 at Silverstone.
“I’ve driven touring cars from before that era, but I’ve never driven a Super Touring car, so I’m obviously really looking forward to that,” the 43-year-old Turkington told Autosport.
“My eyes lit up watching touring cars from when I was young and then racing in Fiestas, so that was my focus, and it’s perfect to get my first taste of a Super Touring car on the GP circuit.
“When I was in the Fiesta Zetec championship, the prize for winning was a test in a Mondeo touring car, and I was good friends with Alan Morrison [fellow Northern Irishman] who won that test [in 1998].”
Turkington, who is not on the BTCC grid in 2025, said that his previous commitments stood in the way of driving a car from the 1990-2000 era of touring cars.
“Jason has offered me on a few occasions to drive the Super Tourer, but it’s never quite aligned,” he added.
“I’ve always been busy doing other things, so this is the perfect opportunity to do it, and there’s no better place to be having my first experience of the Vectra.”
The MG is the car that Hughes raced in the BTCC under the Kartworld Racing banner, although it is not one of the ZSs campaigned by Turkington in period during his early days in the series.
“I’m much more familiar with that car,” he said.
“When I raced it at Silverstone, the first couple of laps felt really strange again after 20 years, but soon it was like putting an old pair of slippers back on.
“Everything felt so familiar – the sound, the shift lights, the handling – and it’s really nice to be reunited with it again.”
