19 Sep 07
Have you ever watched touring car races on TV and wondered how close these monstrous machines are to the real road cars?
With the British round of the World Touring Car Championship taking place at Brands Hatch this weekend, we decided to try out a road car on the venue's Indy circuit to see how it shapes up.
The Chevrolet Lacetti that has been racing in the WTCC for the last three years used to be known as the Daewoo Nubira, before new owner General Motors rebadged the cars. It's perhaps not the first road car you might think of as a contender on the racetrack: it's not exactly quick, the engines are noisy, the gearbox is notchy and it's just, well, a little cheap-feeling.
But in the world of motorsport, Cinderella cars can, with a little greasy magic dust, become transformed. And in the case of the Lacetti, the fairy godmother is RML Motorsport, a Northamptonshire-based company that specialises in building racing cars for all kinds of motorsport and which has been turning a very average road car into a winner on the WTCC circuit.
So we asked Chevrolet if it could let us have one of its road cars for a quick spin around Brands Hatch - and one of its drivers to give us a few pointers.
