BTC Racing Switches To Seat Toledo’s

BTC Racing has opted to ditch its Lexus IS200’s for the remainder of the year, instead running two ex-works Seat Toledo Cupra’s that Motorbase Performance ran last year. The move comes after the team has had a difficult start to the new season, with the team only having recorded one finish out of a possible 12.

At the opening round at Brands Hatch, Chris Stockton failed to finish any of the races and only managed 2 racing laps, whilst Stuart Oliver has only made it to the chequered flag in one race.

“We have been lucky enough to secure a pair of very good cars for the remainder of the 2008 season”, said BTC Racing principle Bert Taylor.   “Although we weren’t particularly successful with the BTC Lexus cars, they provided us with the perfect starter platform to learn the BTCC championship, I firmly believe there is still development potential in the cars to continue the work we have already carried out, they are still potential top 10 cars and we will be sorry to not work with them for the remainder of the season.  The knowledge we have learnt from racing the Lexus has given us the confidence to move forward and we feel that this is a great opportunity to become even more competitive.

The whole team is very excited about the switch.  The Seat’s are proven race winners and their purchase was an opportunity we couldn’t turn down.  Running them will put BTC Racing in a very strong position.

We also have the advantage of having Gareth Howell as our reserve driver.  Gareth raced one of these cars in the 2007 season and his knowledge of the cars will be invaluable.”

Since the team’s arrival in the championship at Brands Hatch in 2006 they have campaigned the Lexus IS200 with little success. However the sheer size and quantity of the reliability issues that have blighted the team at the start of 2008 have led to the purchase of the Toledo’s.