Target Competition’s Kris Richard will not participate in the final TCR Europe race at Circuit de Catalunya after venting his frustration at a stewards decision on social media.
Richard has also been excluded from the opening race, losing the four points scored for eighth and handing KCMG a 5-point advantage over Target in the Teams’ title race heading into the finale.
The post – which has since been deleted from the 2016 ETCC Champion’s Facebook page – labelled the stewards’ decision to exclude his best lap time for infringing track limits, as well as demote him ten slots to avoid giving him the reverse-grid pole in the process, as ‘ridiculous’.
Richard had also implied that the stewards were ‘idiots’ and signed off his post with ‘#f***off’.
In their response, the stewards said Richard’s comments ’caused moral injury’.
That brings the Hyundai i30 N TCR squad down to just three drivers in Dusan Borkovic, Reece Barr and Peter Terting.
That race is set to get underway at 15:55 CEST.