Vauxhall In British GT – 1 – The Monaro
A big, bright yellow Aussie bruiser growling through the bustling paddock at today’s Brands Hatch British GT Media Day heralds a very significant entry into the championship.

The long-planned campaign for an N-GT spec Vauxhall (nee Holden) Monaro to enter the British Championship is soon to come to fruition.

Emotional Engineering is headed up by ex Ascari-man Allen Orchard, and he was cruising the paddock in the bright yellow road car. He confirmed that the team will enter the first of what will become a two car effort from as early as the second round of the championship.

The driving squad for the first car will be made up of ex-superbike racer Aaron Slight and 2003 British GT Cup class champion Matt Griffin.

“We’d particularly like to make the Mondello Round with Matt’s connection with the area,” said Orchard.

The first car is by now making its way to the UK aboard a Malaysian Airlines freighter after a shakedown test at Calder Park. “15 laps, nothing failed, nothing broke but there will be a bit of a delay while we wait for some of the race parts, particularly the rims.”

“We call this the ‘warm’ car, it’s a bit closer to a road car than we’d like, with a 5.7 litre V8. The second car will be here for the second half of the season with a 7 litre motor, we call this the ‘gun’ car and once we’ve got the second car running well we’ll run the team as a two car entry.”

Backing for the effort will come from Valvoline and Cummins with some additional support from the Vauxhall factory: indeed the road car in the paddock was one of five press fleet cars which are in the UK following the launch of the Monaro earlier this week.

“All of our backers have been fantastic but the Cummins Managing Director in Europe, Mike Green, has been utterly superb. If I could put a Cummins engine in the Monaro I would.”

More ‘Vauxhall in British GT’ news very soon.