Tom Boardman ends difficult season on a high

Special Tuning Racing’s Tom Boardman ended the 2013 WTCC season with a pair of ninth place finishes following a tough start to the year, which saw his campaign derailed by a high speed crash at the second round of the Championship in Marrakech.

The 30-year-old finished ninth in the first races at Shanghai and Macau in the team’s SEAT León WTCC, which had been rebuilt after a 110km/h crash at the Moroccan round of the Championship on April 7th.

Further complications from the crash forced the team to miss the Austrian and Russian rounds of the Championship, before a successful Asian portion of the season saw Boardman take two overall points finishes and tie with Franz Engstler and Hugo Valente for 20th in the drivers’ standings, as well as move up to 12th in the Yokohama Trophy for independents’.

Although ninth was a great result for the team in race one in Macau, Boardman found himself caught up in the incident at the start of the second race when Norbert Michelisz’s Zengõ Honda spun across the track in front of the field at Turn 1.

“I was probably a bit too cautious at the start (of race one), and after that it was a pretty straight forward race,” said Boardman to TouringCarTimes. “Tom (Coronel) was in front of me but I was a lot quicker than him through Mandarin and was able to overtake him pretty easily, and that was it really. I was focussing on trying to catch the cars in front; but when (Tom) Chilton went out and stopped on the circuit, me, Coronel and those behind us had to stop, and that allowed all the others to get away from us.

“In the second race I had a good start, got past (Marc) Basseng and then it was just all carnage…typical Macau. I’ve probably not come off that bad compared to a lot of other people. (The damage) is not so bad, just the bumpers, the sides, bent suspension but it’s not that bad, I thought it was going to be much worse.”

Boardman plans to return to the Championship next season, for what would be his fourth year in the WTCC. The easiest option for the Lancashire-based team is continue to compete with the SEAT León WTCC in what will be the second tier of the Championship in 2014, but the team is also working on a programme which may see them compete in a 2014-spec car.

“I don’t want to do anything else,” said Boardman. “It’s been an up and down season, after that shunt at Marrakech that put us well behind, but I want to go back there and do well there, as I know I can be fast. I’m just looking forward to next year now. We just have to get home and start planning for next year.”