Photo: BTCC media

Rick Kerry and Nick Leason plan returns

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Rick Kerry and Nick Leason have vowed they will return to Dunlop British Touring Car action at Oulton Park later this month in much more competitive shape after opting to miss this coming weekend’s rounds at Croft.

Kerry explained that his Team AFM crew preferred to continue development of its unique diesel-powered BMW behind closed doors.

The Ipswich driver told BTCC.net: “In the most recent rounds at Thruxton the car came on in leaps and bounds and we improved our lap times by five seconds between second practice and qualifying. But it’s never ideal developing a car under the pressure of a race weekend in the public eye.

“We feel it’s better to save the five days or so it takes to do a meeting and spend them working behind closed doors in our workshop. We’ve got more engine improvements and quite a weight saving to come that on average could knock around another three seconds off our lap times. That would put us in the pack and I’ll be able to show what I can do as a racer. We’ll be in much better shape when we return at Oulton.”

Leason’s decision to miss the journey North is also deliberate – his BTC Racing team is hopeful it has found the cause of reliability problems that have held back its pair of Lexus IS200s, but has only had time to fix team-mate Chris Stockton’s car. The team, though, will work on Leason’s car during the weekend ahead of a planned test next week.

Leason added: “It’s been a hard decision by the team to put out only one car at Croft, but the correct one long-term as we want to make sure it’s right this time so we’re not just making up the numbers and completing just a handful of laps at the weekend.

“We are now 100 per cent certain we have discovered the problem. Unfortunately, it’s not been in time to get it ready properly for Croft. But the team has made some changes to Chris’s car to hopefully sort out his problems and we all hope to see big improvements for him this weekend.

“I will be still attending Croft to cheer on Chris and help out with the team.”