Aurent Aiello's spectacular career included touring car championships in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as a win at the Le Mans 24 Hours with the Porsche 911 GT1-98. In Britain, he is most renowned for his accomplishments in the British Touring vehicle Championship with RML's ultimate Nissan Primera, as well as racing the iconic Audi R8 prototype, but he swiftly chooses an older vehicle as his favorite.

"The 406 was designed to fit my driving style," explains the 55-year-old Frenchman. Aiello drove the Peugeot Sport-developed 406 in Germany's Super Tourenwagen Cup for three years, winning 20 races and never finished lower than third in the standings against prominent competitors like as Audi, BMW, and Opel.

Nonetheless, Aiello felt the need to make the front-wheel-drive vehicle compete with the rear-wheel-drive BMWs and 4WD Audis. After placing third behind Audi's Emanuele Pirro and BMW's Steve Soper in his 1996 STW debut, there was a strong drive for the second season.

"All the effort and money put into the project was on your shoulders, so you couldn't make the wrong decision, especially on the aero parts because once it's done, it's done for the year [due to homologation rules], or the differential," says Aiello, who had previously won the French Super Touring title in a Peugeot 405 in 1994.

Friday Favorite: The Relative Of A Btcc Dud Who Helped Shape The Aiello Mythology.

"When you have a big budget you can try five solutions but the Peugeot budget wasn't that big so we had to pick two and make the right decision at the start."

When the 1997 406 touched the track, the team realized it had something special. When asked when he felt he could battle for the STW championship, Aiello said, "Straight away."

"Before the season there was a Michelin test and from the start we knew the car was strong," he tells me. "The automobile was quite quick.

Interestingly, given the rate of development at the time, Aiello sees the 1997 version as the pinnacle, despite winning six races and almost retaining his championship the next year.

"The 1997 car was the peak," he claims. "The 1998 vehicle was slower because we dropped the engine somewhat and the oil system didn't operate as well, so we weren't as fast down the straight. The crew worked hard to find a solution, and they succeeded, but we lost the title by three points.

"To be competitive with the RWD BMWs and the 4WD Audis we had to have an oversteering car at the back, the 406 almost turned itself"

Laurent Aiello

After being pipped by BMW's Johnny Cecotto, Aiello moves on to the BTCC and the Primera, which he says as "developed for two or three years before I got there, and you could tell".