Just before heading to Brands Hatch, Andy Priaulx spent one day with the Eurosport crew visiting the Tour de France during the 211km stage from Tonnerre to Vittel.
Before the start, the triple WTCC champion took the opportunity to meet cycling ace Lance Armstrong and his Astana team-mate Alberto Contador.
"Lance was always an inspiration. His story is just unique. So it was great to finally meet him," Priaulx said, adding "I have always been a big fan of Tour de France, and finally thanks to Eurosport, I had the chance to see it as close as possible. A great experience."
Priaulx followed the whole stage inside the Garmin-Slipstream team, sitting in the sporting director’s car.
Watch Andy Priaulx’s Tour de France experience, his meeting with Lance Armstrong and everything from the Brands Hatch Weekend in "Inside WTCC with Andy Priaulx", on Tuesday night at 23:00 cet on Eurosport.
Andy Priaulx met cycling icon Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France
THOMPSON AND LADA AIM FOR GOOD RESULTS
LADA Sport’s new driver James Thompson is looking forward to his home race meeting in Brands Hatch this weekend, after he first drove the LADA Priora on its maiden WTCC appearance two weeks ago in Portugal.
"There’s nothing like competing at home. I enjoyed my first outing with the Priora in Portugal and I hope that we can put some of the lessons we learned there to good effect at Brands Hatch. Our first races allowed us to identify the main areas of development needed, and now we can embark on the long process of putting all these procedures in place. Of course it won’t be an easy task, but thanks to the commitment and dedication of the entire Lada Sport team, I am sure that we can continue to make useful progress," Thompson said.
Compared to the event in Porto, the new Russian car will be 60 kg lighter, as the FIA Touring Car Bureau decided to grant the Priora a weight break on the basis of the performance achieved on the Portuguese street circuit.
James Thompson and his LADA Priora aim for good results in Brands Hatch
WTCC 100 RACES VIDEO CLIP IS ON LINE
Eurosport Events‘ staff created a video clip to celebrate the WTCC’s 100 races.
In 5 minutes and 8 seconds, a breathtaking sequence of spectacular shots reviews the history of the championship from Monza 2005 to Porto 2009, through nineteen key moments.
Some of the most dramatic and thrilling clips depict the first victories of Alessandro Zanardi (Oschersleben 2005), Chevrolet (Brands Hatch 2006), the turbo diesel SEAT (Oschersleben 2007) and Honda (Imola 2008), as well as Augusto Farfus rolling in qualifying at Pau 2007 and winning the 100th race at Porto 2009, the series‘ first visit to Africa (Marrakech 2009) and many crashes and overtaking manoeuvres.
Especially touching are the clips from Macau that remember the moments in which Andy Priaulx (2005, 2006, 2007) and Yvan Muller (2008) clinched the world championship crown.
Click here to watch the 100 races video clip: http://videos.eurosport.com/fiawtcc/top-100-wtcc-races_vid110368/wtcc-player.shtml
WTCC SET FOR NEW RECORD AUDIENCE
215 million viewers worldwide have watched the first four race meetings of the current World Touring Car Championship’s season: Curitiba, Puebla, Marrakech and Pau.
These figures represent a 158% increase of the viewing figures compared to 2008, which proves that the WTCC’s popularity is growing steadily and that the series continues to break audience records, season after season.
In the 2008 season, the WTCC set its new record in TV audiences with a total of 350 million viewers around the world.