ALLISON: A TALE OF TWO ASTRAS
AS VAUXHALL VXR RACING DRIVER OF THE YEAR 2007, HIS LIFE HAS CHANGED; BUT THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT JOHN ALLISON CAN ALWAYS RELY ON – AND THEY’RE BOTH ASTRAS.
WORDS BY JOHN ALLISON
PICTURES BY JOHN WYCHERLEY
You don’t have to know much about motor sport to figure out how the past few months have changed my life – and all thanks to Vauxhall. In January (at a rather soggy Bedford Autodrome), I was crowned winner of last year’s Vauxhall VXR Racing Driver of the Year Competition. And since then, my life has changed in a great many ways. In just a few months, I went fast-forward from just being John Allison the mortgage consultant, to being John Allison the mortgage consultant during the week, and John Allison the fully-funded, fully-committed racing driver on weekends.
Fortunately, part of the joy of winning is that for my first steps in the racing world I’ve had unflinching support, advice and training from Vauxhall, VXR and Triple Eight Racing. And that’s what has taken me from total novice to safely completing my first race in the Dunlop Sport Maxx Cup series at Snetterton in April – onto my first podium just a couple of weeks later, at Pembrey, South Wales, and now genuinely believing that I can score my first ever racing win sometime soon.
Alongside that fantastic support from Vauxhall, I have had one other thing on my side – and that’s from Vauxhall too. It’s the car I drive every day, an Astra Sport Hatch 1.9CDTi 16v 150PS. And while I’m just discovering how good the Astra VXR is as a race car, I already knew how good the Astra Sport Hatch is as a family car and a working car.
In fact, aside from losing the excellent in-car entertainment and standard air conditioning, the race car has essentially the same dashboard as the road version, the same steering wheel, even the same cup-holder behind the handbrake.
All of which means that living with my Astra Sport Hatch on the road for seven days a week does no harm at all to the couple of days I spend in the race car every so often.
A GREAT CAR – AND MY OWN GREAT ROADS
One way and another, I spend a lot of time on the road – but the good side is that I genuinely love driving.
Living in Beverley, my working patch stretches north to Whitby, down to Lincoln and across to York and Selby – with favourite roads that I’m happy to drive over and over again. These are exactly the kind of roads that define ‘great’. They’re also the kind of roads the Editor wants to hear about through the Letters Page – in the form of your own favourites.
For me, the B1249 from Driffield to Scarborough is a classic example; a road that really brings out the best in a dynamically brilliant, driver-focused car like the Astra Sport Hatch.
It leaves Driffield on a twisty but grippy ribbon that changes abruptly to bumpy uphill stretches, then back to super smooth tarmac – all handled with composure by the Astra Sport Hatch’s supple but brilliantly controlled suspension.
Carefully and gently through Langtoft village, then the road climbs steeply again, with more bumpy tarmac, then more deeply-satisfying twists and switchbacks.
Beyond the village you’ll climb again into the most technical section (you’ll notice I’ve already picked up the racing driver language) as the road drops steeply, and turns into a long sweeping left. As it jinks back right and climbs again, the camber goes all over the place. So the Sport Hatch’s suspension gets up on tip-toes for a second before firmly absorbing the compression that inevitably follows in the bottom of the dip.
Towards Staxton you get a first, distant glimpse of the sea – before a final low-gear plunge through a left-right combination, and onto the Astra’s superb brakes in plenty of time for the traffic lights as you join the A64 to Scarborough.