Teams continue to debate NGTC in Scandinavia

The scheduled introduction of NGTC in Scandinavia 2012 continues to create debate among the teams in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship. The Volkswagen-team recently issued a statement surrounding the regulations.
“The decision of STCC makes it possible for the teams to compete with cars that has got a connection with the manufacturers,” said Volkswagen Sweden MD Sten Forsberg.

Forsberg underlines the importance of being able to compete against the top teams in Scandinavia.

“If we are going to take part in a championship, we want to compare our strength with the best, so a high class championship is very important, something STCC has been for many years,” said Forsberg.

While the Volkswagen team is one of the biggest teams in STCC, one of the smallest is IPS Motorsport where 1985 DTM champion Per Stureson is head of the team.

“I think it looks good overall, but without knowing all the details it is hard to say how it is going to affect the competition, because that is one of the main ideas behind the new regulations. I would also say that the price is a bit high. 140.000 € for a car with so many common parts and without engine,” said Stureson.

Team owner and driver of Flash Engineering, Jan “Flash” Nilsson, is not keen on the decision from STCC to introduce NGTC.

“It is a bad decision. I am not sure that we are going to take part if these regulations come in to force. We are going to do 2011 anyway and after that we are going to take a decision,” said “Flash” to NWT.

“Flash” is one of the men behind the team organization TTA that previously held negotiations with STCC AB for the introduction of Solution-F instead of NGTC.

“We want a fair, fresh and better STCC. The Solution-F cars are well-tried and without problems that comes with new regulations. STCC has decided to go with regulations that do not exist yet. They have only tested a prototype in the UK. We would have to build and develop the cars ourselves. We would need to buy equipment for 700.000 €, excluding engines,” said “Flash”.

One of the major Danish teams, Perfection Racing, supports the switch to NGTC.

“I am really glad that they have chosen the British regulations as they are building cars over there and we can join them,” said team boss Kent Bo Steffensen.

The Swedish Volvo team on the other hand are not convinced that there will be any cars available from the UK in 2012.

“I think many teams would want to just buy NGTC cars from Britain, but I don’t think many BTCC teams will be in a position to sell in less than two years’ time,” said Polestar Racing team boss Christian Dahl to Autosport.