When you think about Renault touring car racers, your mind’s eye will no doubt conjure the likes of Alain Menu and Jason Plato door-banging their way around UK circuits in Lagunas during the British Touring Car Championships most boisterous years. Renault contested the British series from 1993 to 1999 in the era when manufacturers were clamouring to be involved.
The Renault 21 SuperTourisme was Renault’s original touring car
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Prior to that, though, Renault focused its saloon car racing energies on home turf with the unapologetically square-set 21 saloon. In its racing form, it looks as hard as nails with its deep air intake, serious rear wing and huge side skirts. Visitors to this year’s Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard were treated to the whooshes of its turbo as it made its way up the 1.16-mile hillclimb.
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The 1989 car shown here didn’t have a greatly successful season, despite the fact that Jean Ragnotti won the championship the previous year. Regulation changes imposed by the French Federation for Automotive Sport (FFAS) didn’t favour the turbocharged Renault, and it had to run with a weight penalty and the boost turned down to 2.0bar.
To try to compensate for the penalties, Renault re-engineered the 21 with a longitudinal engine (as opposed to the previous year’s transverse version) and new transmission.
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After a poor start to the season, the post-break second half of the year saw a partial reversal of fortunes. In the end, teammates Ragnotti and Jean-Louis Bousquet clocked up five wins and eleven pole positions between them and came second overall in the championship.
But none of that makes the sight of the pumped-up 21 SuperTourisme any less spectacular as it carves its way up the Sussex hillclimb.
Photography by Joe Harding and Jordan Butters.
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