Colin Turkington to test for WSR at Silverstone

2009 BTCC champion Colin Turkington is going to test for eBay Motors West Surrey Racing at Silverstone on Friday.
“Colin was the obvious choice – it is purely to help us with chassis and set-up work,” said Team Manager Dick Bennetts to BTCC.net.

“We had planned to run recently at Oulton Park with Tom but the weather forecast was very unpredictable so we canned it. This week it’s a good forecast and Silverstone is a good venue as it’s got long, wide straights which will come in handy as there will be other categories of car out on track at the same time.”

Turkington is testing the WSR BMW 320si as the team’s three 2012 drivers, Rob Collard, Tom Onslow-Cole and Nick Foster, have other commitments.

While racing in the STCC last year for Flash Engineering in an naturally aspirated BMW 320si E90, Turkington also took part in the WTCC, driving the 1.6 turbo charged engine, experience WSR is keen to take advantage of.

“It will be good for Colin to shake the rust off – he hasn’t competed much lately – but also interesting to hear his feedback. He’s obviously raced the 1.6-litre turbo engine in World Touring Cars but not the 2-litre engine used in the BTCC. Fitting a turbo engine to the BMW for 2012 has been a learning curve for all of us – OK, we won first time out with it at Brands Hatch but we need to get on top of our tyre situation. We’ve been running out of steam towards the end of races so, based on a lot of homework back at base, we’ll fire some different set-ups at the car at Silverstone and see what happens,” said Bennetts.