The following release has been issued by Eurotech Racing. The full 2016 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship line-up will be confirmed at tomorrow's (22 March) Season Launch event at Donington Park:
The whole team at Eurotech Racing have been working tirelessly through the winter preparing the three new Honda Civic Type R’s, putting into place a new team infra-structure and preparing the new larger premises for the pending move. Alongside this we have undertaken an extensive testing program putting the new cars and the latest RML chassis updates through their paces.
We have been in lengthy negotiations with several very capable young drivers since purchasing our third licence at the end of last year and despite coming close to securing a deal (one that even last week looked like it could still go ahead) the driver was not able to finalise sponsor funding within the timeframe required to complete our TOCA entry, as a result Eurotech have been forced to make the decision not to run a third car. This is naturally a huge disappointment to us as we have put so much time, effort and money into it. The driver we were close to doing a deal with was a very exciting prospect for BTCC and would no doubt have been at the sharp end of the grid.
We have come to an agreement on our third licence with another team enabling them to run an additional car and driver for this year and keeping our options open to run three cars in 2017.
Taking the positive’s from the situation it allows us to focus purely on the two new Honda Civic Type R’s of Jeff Smith and Martin Depper – both cars showing great pace in pre-season testing, we are looking forward to the start of the new season with confidence in ourselves and our new cars.
Team Principal Jeff Smith comments: "We haven't made any public comments regarding the third driver speculation as we have been keeping our heads down and working hard, confident that it would all come together. I would like to say a heartfelt personal thank you to the team for their hard work, late nights and diligence with all the Type R and RML updates. The result of this focus is that we are in a very good place for the start of the season, albeit with two cars rather than the planned three. It's extremely disappointing having put everything in place including buying a licence, building a third car, restructuring the team and additional premises for it then not go ahead so close to the start of the season."
