A PAIR of Vauxhall Astras has burned through 400 tyres covering the equivalent of five Le Mans 24 hour races in the past few months.

The cars also ate up 40 sets of brake pads and 10 front discs going flat out for 16,000 miles around the Bruntingthorpe test track in Leicestershire.

In the hands of F1 racing driver coach Rob Wilson the two Astras have taken 2,250 corners on the limit, had 95,000 manual gear changes and driven through more than 40,000 hard braking zones in 7,250 laps at the proving ground - and that's all since April.

Wilson is one of the unsung heroes of Formula One and has been instrumental in shaving fractions of a second off the lap times of at least 12 drivers who have been on Grand Prix grids this year.

Their skills have been honed in two standard production Astras - a 1.6 CDTi 136ps diesel Sports Tourer and a 1.6T 200ps petrol GTC.

"The Vauxhalls will do everything that an F1 car does dynamically, just at a far lower speed," said Wilson. "This allows me to explain the physics behind what the car is doing on the track in real time.

"The Astras have been as tough as old boots. Between them, they've covered over 16,000 track miles at Bruntingthorpe in the hands of successive F1, GP2, WRC, DTM and Indycar drivers, and they haven't missed a beat."

Wilson is now replacing his trusty two Vauxhalls with three new Astra SRi models and has already sampled one on track, taking a full three seconds off his best lap time in the outgoing cars.

"I often have a driver's race engineer in the back seat and everyone has commented how comfortable the cars are, and how predictable and stable their handling is. The cars have an unbelievably hard time out on our track, so I need to know that they're not going to break," he said.