Heading into the event ninth in the driver standings after three points scoring finishes during last weekend’s action-packed outing at Donington Park, the 20-year-old BRDC Superstar believes the fantastic balance and first class handling of his 2.0-litre Chevrolet Cruze will pay dividends.

Thruxton, renowned as a tyre-killer due to the high-speed nature of the 2.36-mile circuit, is certainly a unique challenge with its outrageously fast corners at Goodwood, Village and Church and the tight chicane at the end of the lap which always provides incredible overtaking action.

Alex, who scored points in all three races at the Hampshire track last year on his BTCC debut, with a best finish of sixth, is still expecting a very tough battle next weekend but he also feels his RML engineered Chevrolet will be much kinder to its Dunlop rubber than his rivals’ powerful turbo cars.

“Thruxton will definitely suit our car better than Donington”, said Alex, “Over a single lap though, the turbos will still have a big advantage. The Chevrolet Cruze is a great handling chassis and has a good balance in high speed corners which should really help on the fastest parts of the track.

“Obviously, Thruxton is also notorious for punctures – even with a normally aspirated car like the Chevy – so while we try and fine tune the car during free practice, the turbo cars will have to focus on race runs a bit more. My aim at the moment is to again be the top-scoring Chevrolet driver and the best scorer in a normally aspirated car, as I was at Donington last weekend.”

Following two free practice sessions at Thruxton on Saturday, 30th April, qualifying will take place at 15.15 and live footage from the session will be streamed online at www.itv.com/touringcars

Rounds seven, eight and nine will follow on Sunday, 1st May, at 11.30, 14.10 and 17.15 respectively with live coverage across the UK on Freeview, digital satellite and cable channel ITV4, on the ITV4 HD channel and also online at www.itv.com/touringcars

Provisional 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship Standings (after Rd6):
1st James Nash, 59pts; 9th Alex MacDowall, 19pts

Photo by Jakob Ebrey Photography.

James Thompson will drive for the Volvo Polestar Green Racing team in the 2011 edition of the STCC which has now fully transformed from Swedish to its new status of Scandinavian Touring Car Championship.

“We are very happy to welcome James Thompson to Volvo and Polestar. With his track record he should feel right at home with us. Volvo is the market leader in Sweden and our team Polestar has claimed four out of five possible titles here in the past two seasons” says Thomas Andersson, Managing Director for Volvo Cars Sweden”

James Thompson’s duties will extend beyond STCC. Derek Crabb, Executive Director for Motorsport at Volvo Car Corporation, explains:

“First and foremost, James job will be to fight for both STCC-titles for Volvo and Polestar. In addition, James will also be vital in Polestar’s job of evaluating World Touring Car Championship for us in 2011. Finally, James will also be a part of Volvo’s road car chassis dynamics development team together with Polestar WTCC-driver Robert Dahlgren”

With both the STCC and WTCC season closing in rapidly, the pace is high within Volvo Cars Motorsport and Polestar Racing. And in the middle of all, a very happy James Thompson is getting settled:

“I am absolutely delighted. Volvo and Polestar has presented a very clear step-by step plan with a long term potential. Above all, there is a fantastic confidence and a lot of energy here. Last week during my first official visit to Polestar and Volvo, I had a road car prototype test on the agenda the same day. Now it’s off to Spain for race car testing. I am really happy to be a part of this with Volvo and Polestar”

James Thompson’s first race as a Volvo driver will be on April 24 at Jyllandsringen in Denmark as Volvo embarks on its 16th consecutive STCC-season. He will drive Volvo’s most winning touring car to date, the ethanol powered Volvo C30 DRIVe racer, developed with Polestar.

However he has had another chassis change, this time jumping into the ex Will Davison HRT car.

“The car I raced at Bathurst was Fabian’s car from earlier in the year, and he now has that back, so I am using this car this weekend. They are pretty close, but there are some differences between them, so I will have to learn the idiosyncrasies and get the most out of it” Said Percat prior to practice.

Practice didn’t go as planned for Percat, with an electrical fault causing havoc with a whole range of systems in the car in the first session, and then a brake issue in the second.

“Yeah both 40 minute sessions today have really come to zero for us, not only is there very little grip out there, we struggled with a huge number of technical problems, so I hope we can resolve them before qualifying, and make the most of it”

Qualifying for race 1 held in good conditions early on Saturday morning, saw Percat drag the car up to a commendable 5th position on the grid.

“We really ran that session a bit like half a practice session, and then only on the second set of tyres did we get a handle on it so to come out with that lap time shows some promise”

Sadly having thought the problematic Friday was behind them, Race 1 came to zero for Percat when the car coughed to a halt exiting turn 4 with an ignition system failure.

“Not much to say really, we were going good in 5th until the engine stopped, so very disappointing to drop so many points in the championship fight”

Race 2 was the usual reverse grid top 10 however Percat was starting at the back due to the DNF in race 1. Demonstrating the speed and commitment in traffic that we have come to expect from the 2009 Formula Ford champion, Percat powered his way through the grid to be 9th in under 7 laps.

However it was all to come unstuck when a back marker turned Percat around, causing another DNF.

“Well I am sure the stewards will be having a word to that guy, but that is what you end up having to deal with when you come through the field like we did today, we just will have to try again in race 3!”

Try Percat did! Race 3 was an all or nothing affair with his points tally for the weekend an incredulous zero! He put it all on the line and charged through from the rear of grid once more, this time passing even more cars in record time.

By lap 3 he was 10th, and was hauling in the leaders as the laps ticked down, catching and cleanly passing every car he came up behind in a classic rear of grid drive.

“That was a good race, I was able to clear a lot of the traffic early on, and my progress was only muted when I took on some damage to the steering with about 6 laps to go. So to finish 7th was a good result race wise, but championship wise we took a massive hit this weekend which is a shame considering I feel I drove pretty well” Said a slightly disappointed Percat on returning to the garage.

Nick Percat will line up for the final round in 2010 over the weekend of the 3rd – 5th December at Homebush Park.

Stay tuned for all the latest via www.nickpercat.com and be looking out for the TV coverage from Round 6 this weekend on Network 7.

Yes, it is. Paul Di Resta should have been in Formula 1 about the same time that Lewis Hamilton entered, but things took a slightly different route for Di Resta. Instead of keep doing the expensive single seater career move of going to GP2 after taking the F3 Euro Series championship Di Resta was taken under the wings by Mercedes and ended up in DTM (the German “Touring Car” series) in 2007. Not a bad move for Di Resta as he got to race for a large manufacturer in a high profile series, but it did leave him a bit out of the F1 race seat world eventhough he was with Mercedes.

For the last two year he has been a test driver for Force India F1 Team, which uses Mercedes engines, and the rumour mill now says that Force India are looking to promote him to a race seat next year with both Vitantonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil being question marks for 2011.

Only time will tell.

After a couple of wrecks on the first lap the safety car turned out of the pitlane to race leader Franz Engstler’s big surprise who were storming down the long straight and into the quick right-hander only to have a safety-car right in the middle of the street.

The incident is under investigation. According to Dutch TV Channel RTL the safety car had never been given the green light to come out on track and was only in stand-by-mode. (Touring Car Times)

The mayhem of the first laps can be viewed here:

No deal has yet been made, but I doubt Senna and Mercedes are doing a two day test just for fun.

And a Mercedes connection surely can’t hurt Bruno’s potential Formula 1 future. Hamilton and Senna in McLaren 2010?

The four 2009 spec Audi A4 cars will be run by Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline and will be driven by 2008 champion Timo Scheider, 2004 and 2007 champion Mattias Ekström, multiple Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen and by Martin Tomczyk. Abt Sportsline will also be running a 2008 spec Audi A4 for Katherine Legge, who will now be entering her second season in the series and her first season in a one-year-old car as she drove a 2006 spec Audi for Futurecom TME last year.

Oliver Jarvis and Alexandre Premat will be running one-year-old cars for the Audi Sport Team Phoenix team. Both will be entering their second season of DTM racing after both having successful single seater careers behind them.

The two 2008 cars of Audi Sport Team Rosberg will be driven by Mike Rockenfeller and Markus Winkelhock.

Mercedes are yet to announce their complete 2009 line-up.

Boardman ran two WTCC races for SUNRED at Estoril, a prize for winning the European Supercopa race at Pau. The 25 year old British driver made his racing debut in the T Cars championship in 1999 and became champion after winning seven of eight races. He then joined the British Touring Car Championship’s Production class in 2001 where he raced three seasons until moving to the British SEAT Cupra championship in 2004. After winning that championship in 2005 he moved to the Spanish championship in 2006.

In the press release Tom comments on his coming WTCC season:

“It all feels like a bit of a dream at the moment – I feel like the luckiest man alive. Racing in the WTCC has been my aim for some time now, and I feel my time has come to show everyone what I’m capable of.”

“Tom Coronel did really well in the SUNRED Leon last year, and even won the second WTCC race in Japan outright. I think together we’ll make a very strong team and be able to challenge for the Independents’ titles in both the teams’ and drivers’ categories.”

“I’ve raced at half of the circuits already and it will be fun to go to new places like Brazil, Mexico, Morocco, Japan and Macau.  I can learn a new circuit very quickly.  As soon as I arrive somewhere new I go for a jog around the track and that helps me learn the layout, so racing for the first time at these new tracks won’t be such a disadvantage.”

“This is real. Absolutely. He is pretty keen to do it,” Morris said. “It would be the full season. Not just one race. If we can make a bit of a buzz about it then I think it can definitely happen. We would have to write about $2 million in sponsorship so we could run the car and pay him to drive.”

“Both Fabrizio and Matt have a huge amount of experience, so I will be asking quite a few questions. At 19, I know I still have a lot to learn.”