THRUXTON will be at the heartbeat of an exciting new Hampshire challenge in the Green Flag MSA British Touring Car Championship which gets the green light in Ireland on Easter Monday.

On the grid for round one at Mondello Park near Dublin will be a potent brace of Astra Coupes prepared by the Gary Ayles Motorsport team who have moved their racing operation to the Thruxton circuit at Andover.

Scotland's Gavin Pyper won't have to travel too far from his Haslemere base to take the wheel of one of the cars. The other driver is well known in these parts after his heroics for Derek Warwick's Triple Eight Vauxhall team

Pyper's teammate will be former champion Jason Plato who makes a welcome return to touring cars after a year doing American style oval racing at Rockingham.

Impressive performances in the production class of the touring car championship have earned Pyper his best drive yet.

The Ayles team, who have acquired two of the works Vauxhall Motorsport Astras from last season, have moved up to the touring class where Vauxhall, Honda, MG and Proton are all fielding works teams.

Defending champion James Thompson and Yvan Muller, pictured above, drive the new Vauxhall Astra Coupe, Matt Neal, Tom Chilton and Alan Morrison are in the new Honda Civic Type Rs while red-hot Kiwi Anthony Reid again headlines MG's title effort alongside Warren Hughes and the newly-promoted Colin Turkington.

The Petronas Syntium Proton, like the MGs, improved with every race in last year's debut season and keep the same two drivers in the evergreen BTCC campaigner David Leslie and Phil Bennett.

There is strong south coast interest in the touring car class with Alton's James Kaye moving up after winning last season's production championship. Yorkshireman Kaye remains with the Swindon-based Synchro Honda Racing team and will again be driving the Civic Type R.

Ron Collard from Hook in Hampshire swaps the potent little Renault Clio for the tried and tested Vauxhall Astra Coupe in his own Collard Racing team. There's no lack of talent from this guy, just lack of funds. Let's hope he has better luck this time around.

This year's production class boasts only seven cars so far, one of them in the hands of Salisbury's Alan Blencowe who was a consistent top-six runner in 2002. He's landed a seat alongside Luke Hines in the successful Barwell Motorsport team who are fielding a brace of Honda Civics.

Touring car dates for 2003:

April 21: Mondello Park, May 5: Brands Hatch, May 26: Thruxton, June 8: Silverstone International, June 22: Rockingham, July 13: Croft, August 10: Snetterton, August 24: Brands Hatch Indy, September 7: Doington Park, September 21: Oulton Park.