by Russell Atkins

TO READ GIOVANARDI'S ENTERTAINING TAKE ON HIS ROAD DRIVING HABITS, CLICK HERE

Fabrizio Giovanardi insists he is feeling calm and unconcerned about SEAT's turbodiesel threat in this year's HiQ British Touring Car Championship, reckoning the Spanish manufacturer has too much to learn about its new machine to mount a serious title assault.

The Italian pipped SEAT rival Jason Plato to the 2007 laurels by a single point at the end of a see-saw, frantically-fought campaign, but he insists there will not be as few as just two drivers gunning for glory this time around. With the new season set to get into gear at Brands Hatch this weekend, 'Gio' reckons anyone who wins more than a handful of races will be doing very well indeed.

“I would like to leave Brands Hatch with three wins,” he told Crash.net, “but I don't expect such an easy life. It will be important to be very consistent this year; I don't expect to see one or two drivers taking so many wins like happened last year.

“We won't have ten drivers being equally consistent all the way through the year either though; it's just impossible. I'm expecting a big fight, and the best tactic will be to stay out of trouble.”

What's more, the 41-year-old is adamant Vauxhall's twelve months' working with the Vectra – combined with a driver line-up that perfectly blends experience with youth, in the shape of himself, fellow former champion Matt Neal and young gun Tom Onslow-Cole – will hand VX Racing an advantage when the talking stops and the action gets underway in Kent.

“I'm not really worried,” he stressed. “If I was worried what could I do about it anyway? If they are faster than us then it's goodbye championship, but I'm quite sure we have made progress. We had no time at the beginning of last year to experiment with the set-up at all, so we were scared about making changes during the season. This winter we were able to try out various things and found some interesting directions to go in.

“As characters the three of us are working together very well. Matt and I are very competitive with each other, but in the same way we have enough experience so that we don't do anything stupid. We are working for Vauxhall first of all because we are professional, paid drivers. I know Matt quite well, and I think it was a good choice for Vauxhall to bring up a young driver in the team too. Tom can learn a lot whilst pushing me and Matt at the same time.

“I'm feeling very calm. I haven't been thinking about [the championship] much, though I am quite interested to see what kind of job we have done with the car. I think we have gained some performance and in testing we have been pretty fast, but we don't really know about the others yet. I don't think there will be any surprises, though.