James Thompson's challenge at the wheel of the Alfa 156 in the FIA World Touring Car Championship last year has been honoured in the annual awards of premier touring car website TouringCarTimes.

James Thompson's impressive challenge at the wheel of the Alfa 156 in the FIA World Touring Car Championship last year has been honoured in the annual awards of premier touring car website, TouringCarTimes, run by Swedish journalist, Johan Meissner.

The results of the TouringCarTimes Awards voting in the World Touring Car Championship category see the former double British Touring Car winner Thompson being elected the best driver of the 2007 season after he collected 35 percent of the votes, beating the actual title winner Andy Priaulx by 8 percent. Thompson rejoined N.Technology last year and after an impressive season, which included two race wins, was in the hunt for the title right up to the very last race of the season in Macau.

The efforts of the private Italian N.Technology team to keep the venerable Alfa 156 competitive during the final year of its top-line life despite little testing all year was also honoured in the voting by the readers of TouringCarTimes. While Priaulx's BMW factory outfit RBM ran out as winners with 28 percent of the vote, they were only narrowly ahead of N.Technology who collected 24 percent of votes cast.

TouringCarTimes WTCC Driver of the Year: James Thompson - 35%; Andy Priaulx - 27%; Alain Menu - 16%; Yvan Muller - 13%; Rickard Rydell - 3%; Augusto Farfus Jr. - 2%; Tom Coronel - 1%; Robert Huff - 1%; Tiago Monteiro - 1%; Jörg Müller - 1%

TouringCarTimes WTCC Team of the Year: RBM (BMW Team UK) - 28%; N.Technology - 24%; RML (Chevrolet Europe) - 21%; Oreca (SEAT) - 9%; Schnitzer (BMW Team Germany) - 5%; Proteam Motorsport - 3%; SEAT Sport Italia - 3%; GR Asia - 1%; Elgh Motorsport - 1%; Engström Motorsport - 1%; Exagon Engineering - 1%; Racing for Belgium - 1%; Team Aviva WSR - 1%; Wiechers Sport - 1%

Source: TouringCarTimes