TGR Staff - 07/12/2021
In the British Touring Car Championship, there was nothing quite like The Super Touring class, beloved by motorsports fans and well supported by the factories, the series produced some of the most exciting cars from Ford, Renault, Vauxhall, BMW, Volvo, and for for the 1994 season Alfa Romeo fielded the legendary 155 TS BTCC.
Like all cars in the series, the 155 needed to be homologated by producing 2,500 street-legal versions of the purpose-built race car. Sold as the 155 Silverstone Edition, the street version featured an adjustable rear wing and front splitter. Because the adjustable wing, which was included with the road car as a kit that owners could opt to install, it gave the 155 TS BTCC an advantage, one that Alfa Romeo kept under wraps during pre-season testing. At the first race at Thruxton, the team installed the adjustable rear wing, which was perfectly legal since it was sold with every road-going version.
Alfa Romeo completely dominated the 1994 season with team leader Gabriele Tarquini took pole position, fastest lap, and the race win to start the season. He then followed it up with four further wins in the next four events, with each victory came complaints, mostly from Ford. This lead to a tribunal before the sixth race of the season at Oulton Park, where the FIA sided with Ford and ordered Alfa Corse to run the cars with the wings in the retracted position, Alfa responded by packing up the leaving the race in protest.
The FIA eventually compromised with Alfa Romeo and allowed them to run the wing for part of the season. BMW, Ford, and Renault all developed their own loophole specials and added aero to their cars meaning that Alfa Romeo only won one more race that season. In spite of this, Tarquini still took home the driver’s championship, and the team still secured the constructor's championship as well.
By the start of the 1995 season, the FIA had worked hard to close all the loopholes they could, including racing the homologation number to a minimum of 25,000. Alfa Corse switched its focus to DTM, leaving ProDrive to run an ultimately unsuccessful title defense with the 155 in Britain in 1995, which ended with Alfa Romeo withdrawing from the championship entirely at the end of the season.
This particular car was recently offered by RM Sotheby's private sale, is chassis number 90080, the car campaigned by Tarquini at the end of the 1994 season at Silverstone. In this car, Tarquini secured the Driver's Championship, before winning outright in race two. It was subsequently used in pre-season testing for the 1995 season before being revised to its 1994 specification by Alfa Corse at Abarth in Turin before being sent by Gabriele Tarquini as a gift from Alfa Corse legend Giorgio Pianta.
It naturally presents in exceptional great and original condition and is a true pleasure to behold in the flesh; one of the most iconic championship-winning cars from one of the most famous eras of Touring Car racing
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