Thorney Motorsport will not be present at this weekend’s Oulton Park rounds of the British Touring Car Championship, with the team also opting to miss the following meeting at Croft whilst engine problems are resolved.
The team have also announced that they are to drop Swindon Racing Engines as their engine supplier. The team plan to continue to use the TOCA-spec engine but with their own in-house developed ECU mapping.
Team Principal and driver John Thorne expressed his frustration with the team’s treatment by Swindon Engines in an article on the Thorney Motorsport website.
“The team is gutted, we’ve worked so hard to get to the BTCC,” said Thorne. “In testing last week we managed to improve the cars handling 10 fold over the course of the day and I was starting to push the car harder and harder which is a huge improvement over Brands and Donington, but this misfire is just soul destroying.
“We come out of Maggots with 6mph more speed than we recorded at the media day then cough and splutter our way up the straight – it’s a joke and frankly we’ve had enough. All Swindon have done is replace a coil pack, which did nothing even though we were charged for it.
“We are stuck with the engine, NGTC regulations are clear on that and our alternative engine will not be ready for this season so we have the choice either to simply withdraw for the 2012 season completely or develop our own mapping for the TOCA control engine,” continued Thorne. “Sadly that will take more than the couple of weeks we have before Oulton Park so we have no choice but to withdraw.”
The team plan to be out on track again in anger during the second half of the season, which will recommence at the Snetterton 300 circuit on the 11th August.