BTC Racing considering switch to Cruze saloon

Chris Stockton says the BTC Racing team are considering a switch to a Chevrolet Cruze saloon next season in a bid to cure their straight-line speed issues.

Stockton and the team have battled technical problems all season with the engine in their Cruze hatchback, and a switch to the TOCA-sanctioned Swindon engine appears to have cured that issue.

But Stockton said the engine is just one of many areas which need improving – including the aero package, which has left the Cruze propping up many a speed trap in 2014.

Due to the flexibility of the NGTC rules, the team would be able to use most of the existing parts used to build the Cruze saloon if they were to change models.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Stockton said: “RML didn’t choose the saloon [for World Touring Cars] by fluke. It’s slippery, and better down the straights.

“It’s realistic in the winter – it’s not realistic now. We’ve spoken to TOCA and they are open to us changing, but they would far rather it was done in the close season. We can do it now, but we’d be running base boost again.

“Our hands are a little bit tied, and we’ve got to do the best with what we’ve got. If our car went down the straights as fast as the Passat, we’ve have half the difference that we’re missing given to us.”

Stockton qualified 28th on Saturday, 2.431 seconds off the ultimate pace. Reflecting on the session, and the season as a whole, he added: “I’m really disappointed with today, to be honest, because the car actually feels like we should be able to extract a lap time out of it. And we can’t do that, for a multitude of reasons.

“We need testing time – we went to four tests and didn’t even run in two of them. And in the other two we did 22 laps in two days of testing. So we’ve had no mileage, we know that.

“Fundamentally the aero package isn’t very good on it. It’s got a lot more frontal area than a lot of the other cars, and seemingly more drag. It’s never been anywhere other than nearly bottom of the speed traps. At the moment we’re running base boost because we have to, so that’s not helping.

“There’s very little in it between me and some of the better cars, but at the end of the day it’s a second and a half, and drag that out over a lap and that’s seven or eight car lengths in a lap.

“It’s finding that second and a half to two seconds that we need, and it’s going to be meteorically difficult.”

Looking ahead to combating the problem, Stockton said he and the team were determined to find a fix.

He said: “We need to test, and we’ve got some good data now. We’ve been looking at where we’re deficient, and it’s tiny little bits all through the lap.

“That’s how competitive the championship is now, but that’s what we’ve bought into. We’ve got to see this through, and knuckle down.”

But one thing which appears certain over the winter is that the Cruze hatchback’s days are numbered.

“We will do something – we won’t be back in the hatchback,” said Stockton.