There was an exciting year-long battle for the title in the 1983 European Touring Car Championship, fought between the BMW 635i and Jaguar XJ-S, so it was a shock when the penultimate round at Silverstone was won by a Rover Vitesse.
The rain that stopped anyone beating Chuck Nicholson’s time in qualifying continued into Sunday, but this “was to prove TWR Jaguar’s major undoing”.
Steve Soper stole the lead from second in his Rover, then Jonathan Palmer and Hans Stuck both dived past Nicholson at the same corner, on the first lap of 103.
By lap seven, the pole-sitter was all the way down in 12th in a field of 44. Soper held the lead, his key advantage his Michelin wets, while Stuck was stuck (ahem) with Dunlop radials that played a major part in Nicholson’s slump.
Palmer was first to pit for slicks, and when this made him fastest, he was copied by Soper and his teammate Jeff Allam – although Stuck had to retire when he lost a wheel.
In the final third, there was a real scrap between James Weaver (now in Palmer’s car) and Peter Lovett (in Allam’s), taking the latter out.
And so Soper and René Metge won Rover’s first TT since 1907 by 17sec ahead of Palmer and Weaver.
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