Arena still waiting to make decision on WTCC

British Touring Car team Arena International Motorsport are still waiting for a decision from Ford before they’re able to confirm plans to enter the World Touring Car Championship in 2012 with their Super 2000 specification Ford Focuses.

The Littlehampton-based squad took their first win and pole position of the season at Knockhill just over two weeks ago, after challenging for the title against the manufacturer entries of Honda and Chevrolet last season.

Ford have been involved in a supervisory capacity over Arena and Motorbase Performance’s effort in the British Touring Car Championship this season, and with the team’s new Super 2000 cars soon to become inelligible to win the title from 2013, the team are looking to jump to the world stage with Ford in 2012.

“Ford definitely haven’t said they’re coming yet,” said Arena Team Principal Mike Earle to TouringCarTimes.

“We’ve got a meeting with them to decide what they’re involvement will be, we’re no further on. We’re building a car which will run in October and at that point we’ll make a decision on whether we’ll do it or not. If we don’t do the World and we don’t do the British, and we don’t know that we’re not yet, but if we don’t do the British, we’ll have to go and do sportscars.”

“We want to stay in touring cars, but it’s just a bit difficult to interest sponsors, manufacturers anybody at the moment. For a start they can’t understand it. They say ‘well, why are you only doing this speed?’ and we say, ‘well, they’ve given us more weight and turned down the boost’, ‘alright, okay fine, I thought it was just motor racing’.”

Earle added the team had investigated the possibility of building the BTCC’s new Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC)-specification version of the Global Ford Focus for 2012, but were told they’d need to use the TOCA controlled frame due to the way their car is designed.

“(TOCA) want all the cars to have their roll cage…(so) we would have to build new cars and we just can’t afford to go and build three new cars having built three this year. So in a way it’s kind of forced our hand.”

After a strong showing at Knockhill, all Super 2000 cars with NGTC-specification engines were hit with a 20kg increase in base weight ahead of last weekend’s meeting at Rockingham, coupled with a set-up issue with the differential on Tom Chilton’s car, this put the team on the back foot all weekend.

If Arena do go ahead with plans to enter the WTCC, the intention is to enter the series with the S2000 New Focus with a 1.6 litre turbocharged unit based on the engine used by the Ford World Rally Championship team, which will be built by the team’s engine partner Mountune Racing.