After an eventful first weekend in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship, the BTC racing team are looking forward to bringing their two Lexus IS200’s to Silverstone.

Team owner Bert Taylor said, ‘We learnt a lot at Brands Hatch and considering the short amount of time we had the cars, we came away from the weekend feeling that we had achieved what we wanted to achieve. We have spent the time in between races working through our list of development needs and we are hoping the improvements we make will move us further up the grid.’

BTC Racing drivers Chris Stockton and Darren Dowling are both optimistic of improvement at Silverstone.

Chris Stockton has high hopes of improving his grid position at Silverstone:

“I believe that our team will be in a much stronger position at Silverstone this weekend. The lay out of the Silverstone track will particularly suit the Lexus IS 200 as the track is a lot faster and we won’t have to worry about the lack of torque out of slow corners. Our engine tuner Mountune is fully aware of what upgrades is needed for Silverstone.

The team is raring to go and their experience and expertise in other areas of Motorsport is going to help us emerge as a major force in the BTCC. They all came away from Brands Hatch saying that is was fantastic to be part of the BTCC and our chief sponsor Mardens is cock-a-hoop at our involvement in what is regarded as the most exciting racing in British Motorsport.

I am aiming to qualify in the top ten of the grid and get a clean start in the race. If we improve our finish positions of 12 and 13th from Brands then this will be another massive step forward in our development towards racing for a full season in 2007.”

Darren is confident that the issues that he had with understeer at Brands Hatch will be significantly improved for Silverstone:

“I am looking forward to the prospect of being offered the opportunity to race again in the BTCC with BTC Racing. The list of problems we had at Brands Hatch, particularly with the oversteer issue I experienced, should be ironed out by the time we get to Silverstone and I believe that the cars will be much more competitive.

My main aims for the weekend are to qualify further up the gird and finish all three races with improved results.

We are still looking for sponsors for next year and Brands Hatch and Silverstone have given us an ideal platform to show potential investors that we are out there. We achieved so much in our first outing at Brands and the future of BTC Racing in BTCC is looking bright.”