WestCoast Racing confirm departure from STCC for 2019
WestCoast Racing will not return for the 2019 Scandinavian Touring Car Championship season, with the Halmstad-based operation confirming yesterday its local programme will be in the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia series, while the team is looking further afield for its TCR programme.
The team, which won the STCC title five times and has won 52 races in the championship, returned to the STCC after a year’s absence in 2018, fielding three Volkswagen Golf GTI TCRs for three-time champion Fredrik Ekblom, and touring car rookies Andreas and Jessica Bäckman.
However, its STCC programme wasn’t as successful as many expected. Fredrik Ekblom achieved the team’s best results of the season, with third at Anderstorp and a second-place finish at Falkenberg.
The team was far more successful elsewhere in Europe, winning the inaugural TCR UK Touring Car Championship with Dan Lloyd, while showing front-running pace in a one-off outing at the TCR Europe series season finale at Barcelona, running cars for the Bäckmans and 2017 BTCC champion Ash Sutton.
“We’re evaluating all other options for 2019,” said team principal Dick Jonsson-Wigroth to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve already confirmed we will compete in the 2019 Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia, which brings with it huge interest and motivation to the crew and team partners. After the campaigns of last season, we showed at the TCR Europe final that we are more than capable of competing at the top when given the right circumstances, hence why we’re looking into other options outside of Sweden to race our TCR cars in 2019.”
