Richard Hawken: “The guys have delivered a stunning car”

New British Touring Car driver Richard Hawken is itching to get behind the wheel of his new Infiniti Q50 ahead of a winter testing programme.

Hawken was unveiled as one of the drivers in the new Support Our Paras Racing team alongside Derek Palmer Jr, and is counting down the days to the start of pre-season testing.

“I’m looking forward to it immensely,” Hawken told TouringCarTimes. “It’s taken a lot of work to get the car to the stage it’s in now, in terms of getting out on the circuit next year, I can’t wait. The BTCC’s been something I’ve been working towards for a while.

“We’re hoping to start testing in January – depending on the weather. The Great British weather is so unpredictable, we’re hoping to test in the UK on UK circuits but if the weather is poor then we’ll head over to Europe.”

Once the car was unveiled by members of the Parachute Regiment, many people were impressed with the look of the car and the reaction on social media suggests fans are taking a shine to the new model in the series.

“When we started looking at the body design, a lot of which has been done by [Team Manager] Derek Palmer Sr, he’s helped out on the aero – he’s very good at all that stuff, we wanted the car to look as muscly and as aggressive and as touring car-esque as possible and what the guys have delivered is stunning.”