AmD looking forward to BTCC debut

Shaun Hollamby has promised that the AmD Essex VW Golf will “look spectacular on the grid” this season as the team prepare for their BTCC debut. Speaking to TouringCarTimes during the Autosport International show, Hollamby admitted he cannot wait until the season starts and was astounded by the public interest in the car, which was on display throughout the show.

The event gave media and the public the first chance to get up close to the latest addition to the BTCC grid, which still wore its Baltic Touring Car Championship livery.

“The colours work very well for AmD and also Milltek Sport who are the primary sponsors of the car” commented Hollamby. “So I think we are definitely going to stay with these colours, although there might be some slight changes in the overall colour scheme, but 90% of it will stay the same.”

TouringCarTimes enjoyed a lengthy chat with Hollamby on the AmD Essex stand at the International show on Thursday, with the companies Managing Director recounting how the car eventually came into his possession in a Lidl car park in Denmark!

“We went over last Friday and met halfway, in Denmark, and picked it up and brought it back, gave it a wash off and then a bit of a launch on the internet. We’ve been amazed at the reception so far. Here’s to more of that.”

There certainly was more of that across the four days of the Autosport show, with Hollamby describing the interest in the team as “absolutely fantastic”.

“I’ve been to Autosport for the last three years and I’ve never had the response like this before. This is a totally new ball game and it’s because it is the British Touring Cars and because it is a Volkswagen Golf in the British Touring Cars.

“Hopefully that interest will carry over into when we’re racing as well.”

Hollamby’s emphasis on the Volkswagen aspect is important when the discussion comes around to the reasoning behind the choice of vehicle, a VW Golf, a model that hasn’t been seen in the BTCC for over 20 years.

“It’s a very important decision. We’re primarily a VAG (Volkswagen Audi Group) tuning company, so it would be sensible to pick something from the VAG Group.

“We did actually look into getting a BMW about two months ago, but that didn’t come off. That wasn’t quite so exciting though, so I probably didn’t chase that as hard as I should have done.

“Whereas a VW is exactly where we want to be and if we are going to go touring car racing, it is best to do so with a VAG product.”

Shaun emphasised to TouringCarTimes the importance, and relevance of the BTCC project to AmD’s day-to-day business activities, focussed around high performance vehicles turning of VAG vehicles, but also encompassing other brands such as Ford, Renault and Land Rover.

As such AmD already have a number of ideas in the pipeline to promote the team and business both at the race track, and also away from the circuit, which if they come to fruition will certainly help promote the BTCC to a wider, non-motorsports, audience.

With the VW Golf being the most popular model of car that AmD work with, it made sense to snap up the former Baltic Touring Car Championship machine for the team’s graduation from the Dunlop Sport Maxx Cup.

Whilst the Golf adheres to S2000 regulations there will be several changes made before the car begins testing. First and foremost of those is a new aero package, with one option currently running on a Golf touring car in the Middle East while two further options are with British companies offering to do more “modern versions” of that package.

“I think the aero package is the biggest change we’ll make”, said Hollamby. “Peter (Riches) and his team have been extremely helpful, and I’d like to thank them for that, with helping us through the rigmarole of British Touring Car homologation.

“But the car is built to S2000 spec, so we have to complete the paperwork to ensure all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed. That’ll all be done next week, Peter is coming to see us at West Thurrock so we can run through the basic spec of the car and check over to make sure there’s nothing obvious amiss.

“Something he pointed out this morning is that are joins in the fuel lines and that is not allowed under RAC regs, but that’s just to do with different counties, so there’s probably a few more little things like that that we need to sort out.”

Once sorted the plan is to have the car out on track for the first time between the middle of February and the start of March as the team prepare for their debut BTCC season.

Having known, and worked with many of the team who will be preparing and running the car for many years, including most recently in the Sport Maxx Cup (where the team ran Simon Shaw to the title in a Class A SEAT Leon Cupra in 2009).

While Hollamby is currently scheduled to take on the full driving duties himself, Shaw could also appear for selected meetings providing he can source the budget to do so, so for the moment TouringCarTimes stuck to asking Shaun how he was looking forward to joining the BTCC grid.

“I can’t wait! I’ve been racing for 30 years now in various formula from karting upwards and I have to say that British Touring Cars is always something that I’ve looked up to. I’m very proud to be able to say that I’m a British Touring Car driver this year.”

And as for a prediction on how he’ll do?

“I can predict that I’m going to enjoy myself, that’s probably the safest prediction at the moment!”