T
OPINION
20 MODERN CLASSICS
WHO IS...
TIFF NEEDELL
After a long career not only
as a motoring broadcaster
but as a racing driver, his
opinion on any car needs to
be taken seriously
Tiffrecallsdrivingthesmile-
inducingRenaultSportSpideron
the road – and the pain of racing it
he Renault
Sport Spideris
on e of those
quirky French gems that
ar rive out of nowhere
an d then quickly
disappear. It followedin
th e footsteps of the mad,
re ar-engined Renault 5
Tu rbo from a decade
ea rlier and was the first
model to come with the
RenaultSport tag. But
while the 5 Turbo hada
re ason for its existence,
built to be homologated
fo r rallying, the Spider
was just plain mad.
When I drove one of
th e early left-hand drive
ve rsions for Top Gear
(tinyurl.com/y5n3jgj4) it
didn’t even have a
windscreen let alone civilised extras like a
radio or a heater, and its styling was more
odd than attractive. It was something of a
poor man’s Ferrari F50, designed to give a
racing car experience for the road.
When they added a windscreen for the
right-hand drive cars, it took away much of
its character and spoiled its looks. The aero-
screen on the original cars deflected most of
the airflow over your head – like on Jim Clark’s
Lotus 25, which made it a bonus for me!
Sadly the driving experience didn’t quite
live up to expectations, with the 2.0-litre,
16-valve Clio engine wheezing away behind
me and suspension too soft to really bring
the chassis alive, but it was still smile-on-
your-face motoring with responsive steering.
In the UK, the Spider will probably be best
remembered for its one-make race series
from 1996-99 that gave two struggling
British drivers a huge boost to their careers.
any lack of serious
opposition. It was a car
that allowed the best
drivers to rise to the top,
as I found out when I had
a one-off outing in the
second round of that
inaugural season.
The challenge of
Thruxton’s high-speed
corners and flowing
features were magnified
by the somewhat
wayward Spiders that
had been delivered late
due to roll-bar issues.
They were very pitch-
sensitive, so mild
understeer with the
power on would swap to
snap oversteer if you
suddenly lifted off as I
would find to my cost...
Jason Plato won 11 of the 14 rounds in the
inaugural year of the Spider Championship,
forcing his way into a Renault Touring Car
the following year – and 96 wins later he’s
still there. Then in 1999, Andy Priaulx,
another single-seater struggler, won all 13
rounds and, although he returned to
Formula 3 for a couple of seasons, he too
would soon launch a brilliant Touring Car
career going to the DTM and WEC.
The fact that both dominated their
seasons reflected more on how hard the
cars were to drive on the limit rather than
I set the fourth fastest time in qualifying
with Plato fastest, but they had a weird
system where the top eight would then go
into a draw for grid positions. Plato drew one
- the jammy git that he is – and I got six! I
didn’t use enough revs off the line and then
struggled to get used to the tight gates of
the six-speed gearboxes the race cars had
- second to fifth doesn’t help!
Then the car in front of me got in a mess
in the middle of ultra-fast Church Corner just
as I was closing in and, forced to suddenly
lift, the Spider turned into a 100mph
spinning top! My day was saved by a red flag
causing a restart from our original positions.
I still made a hash of it and lost a few places
again, but gave the TV cameras something
to entertain the viewers by battling back to
fourth with a classic ‘round the outside’ into
the Chicane on the last lap. Great fun... but
you never want to be beaten by Plato!
‘THE SPIDER WAS
JUST PLAIN MAD’
THE RACER
Tiff Needell
ALAMY
