How to drive a Super Touring car
Back in 1997, British Touring Car star Alain Menu gave MARCUS SIMMONS some tips on the art of being a tin-top master. Here's what he said
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The truth is simple. If you want to drive a Super Touring car quickly, there are just three steps. First, get in the car. Second, start it up. Third, drive it as fast as you can. Easy.
Or maybe not. Perhaps we need to ask an expert. Let's try the man who drives a Super Tourer quicker than anyone else in the British Touring Car Championship, maybe even anyone else on this planet.
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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