AAA Saloons: Oulton Park preview

The AAA Saloon Cup, featuring some of the UK's fastest saloon cars, heads to Oulton Park on Saturday July 24th for the penultimate double header of the season.

With double Brands Hatch winner Nick Williamson having to miss this round the action at the front end of the pack is likely to centre on Malcolm Wise (Escort Cosworth) who won a race at Silverstone and will be going head-to-head with the infamous 900 bhp Bogey Evo driven by Simon Norris. Norris is currently the driver on form, having recently won a round of the MLR Sprint Series and been fighting with the front runners in the latest round of Time Attack.

After a poor performance at Brands Hatch, compared to his usual winning ways, Gary Prebble, behind the wheel of his 700 bhp Sparshatts Evo VII RS, will be hoping for a return to the top step on the rostrum to add to his 2 victories from earlier in the season.

Making his better-late-than-never debut in AAA Saloons will hopefully be Paul Doyle in his 700 bhp Subaru - assuming his last minute track session goes according to plan. Although the car has proved to be fast in Time Attack, Paul has yet to put his skills and car to the test under full race conditions.

Meanwhile Ajec Racing's Laurie Kilby (Evo IX) will be hoping that his fast but unlucky season finally generates the results he's been looking for all year. With recent Time Attack success and a track session at Oulton Park earlier this month Richard Jones is gaining more and more confidence in his 2.2L Launch Motorsport Evo VIII - will we see him returning to the rostrum as he did at Silverstone ?

Completing the GpA runners is Jonathan Faull hoping to finally put his Evo's mechanical problems behind him and secure a decent result.

In GpB, for cars limited to 400 bhp - and getting their first taste of slick tyres, Steve Liquorish in the Ergo/JRM Evo X is likely to be the front runner, his main competition coming from the Ajec Racing guest Evo VIII which so far this season has raced to victory in three races; twice at Castle Combe and once at Silverstone.

At Oulton Park the Ajec guest driver is Roger Green from Evo magazine - a very experienced racer in numerous different cars and events - let's hope it goes better than his latest race; that was at the Nurburgring and ended with him jumping out of his Lotus Exige which was on fire!

With two GpB wins under his belt from the last round at Brands Hatch Martin Thomas (in his first season of racing) driving the Somerset Storage Evo VIII has his fingers crossed that he'll once again be taking some champagne home with him, although this event marks his Oulton Park race debut.

The man to beat in this year's Nippon Challenge - 5 wins out of 6 - is Vaughan Fletcher and this weekend he's switching to AAA Saloons to see how his race-winning Subaru Impreza RA matches up with the GpB Evos. He'll be joined by another new Subaru driver in the shape of Ian Froggatt, both cars built by the well-respected Scooby Clinic.
Completing the mixture of Group B cars are Angus Gorringe - he made his race debut at Combe last year in a BMW M3 - who will be racing his Tangerine Audi S2, while David Harries is hoping that his Subaru will now be more competitive due to some weight saving and a switch to wider tyres.

Watch AAA Saloon Cup highlights from Oulton Park on Friday 6 and 13 August at 7:40pm (BST) on Motors TV.


Simon Cooke

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