Yukinori Taniguchi has seen his 2011 FIA World Touring Car Championship campaign come to an early conclusion after his team, bamboo engineering, announced that they were unable to fix the damage from Tianma in time for the Macau finale this weekend.
Richard Coleman, bamboo engineering Team Principal said about the damage to Yuke’s Chevrolet Cruze: “It’s obviously very disappointing for Yuke and the team, but unfortunately we just haven’t had enough time to repair the car. Being on the other side of the world has made it logistically more difficult with a demanding freight schedule. If this had occurred at one of the European events, then we would have had the car repaired, no problem. It’s just unfortunate that this amount of damage has occurred between these events.”
This means that the team is down to a single car for the weekend, with Darryl O’Young at the wheel. The Hong Kong based driver heads into the weekend with confidence and fully focused on finishing the season on a high.
The Macau weekend also sees the team welcome a new sponsor – Gulf Marine. Coleman added: “We’re still looking forward to a good weekend with Darryl and our new partners for Macau Gulf Marine. Darryl’s very confident around Macau as it’s a circuit that he’s very familiar with and he’s really focused on finishing the season with a strong performance after recent disappointments”
The 2011 FIA World Touring Car Championship finale gets underway tomorrow morning with a thirty minute test, with the final two rounds taking place on Sunday, 20 November.