The 1986 European Touring Car Championship, known in 1986 as the FIA Touring Car Championship, was the 24th season of the European Touring Car Championship. The championship was run to the FIA's international Group A touring car regulations.
Contents
Background
The 1986 season had all the signs of being a classic year for the championship. Never before or since have were so many works cars entered. 1985 champion team Eggenberger Motorsport switched from Volvo to Ford, becoming their works team with the fast but fragile, turbocharged Ford Sierra XR4Ti. Defending champion manufacturer Volvo turned to Belgian outfit RAS Sport to run the factory Volvo 240T turbo's, while Tom Walkinshaw Racing again entered three (or sometimes more) Rover Vitesse's on behalf of Austin Rover. The 3.5 litre V8 Rovers had been on a steady development path since 1982 and were still surprisingly competitive. Schnitzer Motorsport found some extra horsepower during the winter and their factory backed BMW 635 CSi's became a force once again, while 1986 also saw Australian marque Holden racing in Europe for the first time. The Aussie charge was led by Allan Grice's privateer Australian National Motor Racing Team and Peter Brock's famed Holden Dealer Team who entered some races with their 4.9 L V8 Commodore's ahead of the 1987 World Touring Car Championship season. And this was only Division 3.
Division 2 was contested by the BMW 325i, Mercedes-Benz 190E and Alfa Romeo GTV6. The Alfa, which had won Div.2 in 1985 thanks to Belgian team Luigi Racing, would find things much tougher in 1986 against the 325i (the forerunner of 1987's BMW M3) and the Mercedes with its 2.3 litre engine developed in conjunction with Cosworth.
Although the races proved to be very entertaining, behind the scenes, protest followed protest with the usual protests coming over the fuel used by the factory Volvo's, with the team disqualified after winning both Round 5 at Anderstorp in Sweden and Round 7 at the Österreichring in Austria, victory on both occasions going to one of the TWR Rovers. There was also controversy about whether there had been the required 500 evolution models of the 240T built that allowed the car to race. Even more controversy surrounded the legality of the TWR Rovers and although nothing was ever proven, rumours about altered body profiles, enlarged engines from the homologated 3.5L V8 to 4.0L, and special racing fuel (all cars were required to run standard pump fuel) persisted throughout the season. In a 2006 interview with Australian Muscle Car magazine, Allan Grice's chief mechanic Les Small claimed that prior to Round 3 at Hockenheim in West Germany he managed to get hold of some of the same fuel that the TWR Rovers used and that subsequently the 420 bhp (313 kW) Commodore (the most powerful car on the grid, but also the heaviest at 1,325 kg (2,921 lb) which was approximately 200 kg (440 lb) more than its rivals) was much faster on the straights than they had been previously. Interestingly, Small also claimed that the fuel came from Shell while TWR's sponsor was Bastos (Texaco).
The final round at Estoril seemed to give Win Percy the title, who would pip Roberto Ravaglia by just one point. So Percy was champion – for just four weeks. Then, FISA remembered a rule change from the previous January, which stated the worst five results (opposite to the four of 1985) would be dropped from the overall standings. Ravaglia was champion instead also the smaller Toyota AE86 surprisingly beating the bigger BMW M6 in the Manufacturers Championship by 13 points.
European Touring Car Championship
Champion: Roberto Ravaglia
Runner Up: Win Percy