Photo: WTCC Media

Proteam upset over weight loophole

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Italian privateer team Proteam Motorsport left the last WTCC race at Brands Hatch upset over the weight system. TouringCarTimes met up with team owner Valmiro Presenzini.
“The current situation is not good for the championship and it is not good for us. It is obvious that the compensation weight system is not working properly,” said Presenzini to TouringCarTimes.

The issue of controversy is the weight for the different year models of the BMW 320si. Proteam is running the latest specification of the BMW 320si E90 which saw them having 75 kilos more compared to Colin Turkington in the privately entered 2007 specification BMW 320si.

Turkington scored two podium finishes at Brands Hatch, coming close to beating the factory BMW of Andy Priaulx in the second race.

“I respect Turkington and I really see him as a great driver. He has a successful history in high profile series such as BTCC, but we would have loved to compete against him with the same tools and weight.
I am not bitter, I am just saying that we will never know how things would have turned out if we all had the same weight,” said Presenzini.

Proteam tried, just as the factory BMW team RBM, to run an older car for their third driver Fabio Fabiani, but was rejected by the FIA as the car has already been used earlier in the season with the latest specifications by Sergio Hernàndez.

“They [FIA] told us that the car had already been used as a new one and that we could not go back,” said Presenzini.

For the coming race at Brno the weights have been adjusted, but Presenzini still means that the loophole in the regulations caused them a lot of damage.

“The problem is that two races were spoiled by something that was missed when writing the rules. Although the situation is more or less back to normal now, we still had difficulties in two races which we really performed well in. Hernández’s best lap time was close to [Augusto] Farfus time.
All I can say is that in the Brands Hatch pit lane there were more people looking at the papers than at the track, which is of course bad for the sport,” said Presenzini.