Swede Rickard Rydell will miss his third consecutive World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) event in a row this weekend, with the Nika Racing driver still ill with thyroiditis.
Rydell was diagnosed with thyroiditis in the build-up to the Marrakech event in mid-April, and the experienced touring car driver has not yet recovered.
His Nika International team have also been unable to source a replacement driver, meaning that the Swedish outfit have now missed three events in a row, or one quarter of the entire season.
Also absent this weekend will be the third LADA of Mikhail Kozlovskiy. The Russian has been withdrawn as the Russian squad only has two race-ready cars, due to Rob Huff suffering a heavy crash in testing following the Hungarian event last week. That crash came after another of the teams’ chassis was damaged in Morocco, when Kozlovskiy slammed into the back of team-mate Huff.
Proteam Racing are absent for the second event in succession, having failed to replace Dušan Borković. As a result, just seventeen cars have been entered for an event which the WTCC is dubbing as ‘the big one’. Sabine Schmitz, as a guest entry in the second Münnich Motorsport Chevrolet Cruze, is the only additional entry.