When asked to reveal some of his favourite moments and races during the fifty years he has competed in motorsport, touring car icon Anthony Reid highlights the British Touring Car Championship’s August Bank Holiday meeting at Brands Hatch in 1998 as one of his favourites – in particular, a race he never ended up winning!

“It was the 31st August 1998 and Brands Hatch was a sell out – you had to be here before 7 o’clock in the morning, or you would be caught up in the traffic outside! In fact, I was one of the ones caught up in the traffic! I got as far as the big roundabout at the top of the M25, when I had to make a phone call to one of the mechanics who had a motorbike. I dumped the car on the roundabout, waited for him to pick me up and we only just got into the track in time for morning warm up!”

It was the second appearance of the season for Nigel Mansell in the Ford Mondeo, with his presence undoubtedly adding to the numbers pouring into the circuit. Mansell wasn’t the only addition to the grid for the weekend however, as Tiff Needell was also joining the fun in a third Nissan Primera in the Ray Mallock squad – alongside Reid and David Leslie.

“I call it the zenith of Super Touring,” Reid says. “We had 8 strong manufacturer teams, all with well-paid international drivers. In fact, there were more paid drivers in Super Touring than in Formula One at that time! At Brands, Nigel Mansell was on the grid once again in a Ford Mondeo, whilst Tiff Needell joined my Nissan team as a third driver for a Top Gear feature celebrating the success of the super touring formula.”

Reid’s form in the second half of the 1998 season was particularly strong. He put together a string of results that brought him right into championship contention against Volvo’s Rickard Rydell. “I had won the first race of the afternoon, the Sprint race, but the race I particularly remember fondly was the feature race. I wasn’t on pole position, I was second, so Rickard got into the lead and I was chasing after him hard. After a few laps, coming into Druids, he decided to effectively brake-test me, which meant I was swamped by James Thompson and the Renaults.”

What followed was a gritty, elbows-out charge through the field—helped in no small part by a flawless pit stop from the Ray Mallock crew. “Our pit stops were just phenomenal,” Reid later recalled. Lap after lap, he extracted everything from the Nissan Primera, slicing through the pack with purpose. By the closing stages, his relentless pace brought him right onto the tail of Rydell’s Volvo. “With three laps to go, I caught Rickard again going through Druids,” Reid said. “He slowed me up mid-corner, we touched, he had a shimmy and slid wide, so I passed him up the inside.”

Reid held his nerve to the chequered flag, taking a hard-fought victory, but the drama didn’t end there. “As we pulled into Parc Fermé, all the BBC Grandstand cameras were rolling, Steve Rider was standing by, and Rickard was hopping mad,” Reid recalled. “He parked up, hurled his steering wheel on to the dash, jumped out, stormed over, yanked open my door—and started throttling me in front of Steve Rider!” It was a surreal, chaotic postscript to one of the most intense races of the Super Touring era.

Although Reid was later stripped of the win and Rydell handed a fine and endorsement for his post-race outburst, the moment remains a career highlight for Reid. “Nigel Mansell and Tiff had a bit of a spat in the pit lane, then you had the drama between myself and Rickard in Parc Fermé— it all just added to the show,” he reflected. “The tension and the theatre of it all was just incredible – it was Super Touring at its peak and that’s why I call it the zenith of Super Touring.”

You can listen to our full episode of our Stories From SuperTouring podcast on this race meeting below.