The Special Tuning Racing team has confirmed that it will miss this weekends’ WTCC Race of Austria at the Salzburgring and the maiden WTCC Race of Russia at the Moscow Raceway.
After the premature end to the Marrakech weekend, where Tom Boardman ended up in the barriers during morning warm up, the team have struggled during the Slovakian and Hungarian weekends and have thus decided to miss the trip to Austria and Russia so they can focus on repairing the car.
Between Marrakech and the Slovakiaring, the team had to reshell the car and then had to install a new engine at the track, and the Slovakian weekend saw them lose two engines while they struggled for pace in Hungary.
The decision means that they will return to the Championship for the final race of the European leg of the 2013 World Touring Car Championship, which takes place on the streets of Porto over the 29/30 June as well as competing in the flyaway races, which is due to commence in Argentina over the 3rd/4th August.
Speaking about the announcement, Team principal John Boardman said: “This is not a decision we have taken lightly, but after a couple of difficult and frustrating weekends trying to fix the car in racing conditions, I think the best course of action is to make sure the car is properly sorted and back to where we had it at the start of the season. We have the necessary tools to get the job done, and the best place to do this is back at base.”