Hyundais to race in British Touring Cars
BTCC
Hyundai will be represented on the British Touring Car Championship grid for the first time in the series’ history in 2020 as the Excelr8 Motorsport team enters two brand new i30 Fastback N Performance models.
The team has started work on two examples of the coupe-style car, which it aims to have ready for a testing programme in mid-february next year.
It is the first time that Excelr8, which only joined the BTCC in 2019, has built its own BTCC car – although it does have a background in building machines for the Mini Challenge UK and it has also exported several examples of the Mini.
Although no drivers have been announced, Excelr8 entered the BTCC this term with a brace of MG6 GTS, driven by Sam Osborne and Rob Smith. They scored two points each and took Excelr8 to 10th out of 14 entries in the Independents Teams points.
Team principal Rob Shepherd said that the dynamics of the Hyundai, particularly its aerodynamics, make it an ideal proposition as a tin-top racer.
Shepherd said: “Technically the car has some properties which suit the [currentspec] NGTC design very well, such as the overhangs and the wheelbase. It’s very similar in size and dimension to the new-spec Honda Civics that we’ve seen were so successful across the course of this year. And the aerodynamic properties of the base car are pretty good as well. That will allow us to build a front-wheel-drive platform that’s more progressive than what we had this year with the MGS.”
The team will be able to use some of the underpinnings from the MGS, including the raft of controlled parts such as the subframes, suspension and engine.
“We got some good base data for the MGS when we took over the running of them from previous teams,” added Shepherd. “We’ll have a combination of using that and what we’ve learned from this year to create our baseline for set-ups and performance goals for the start of this programme. A lot of the NGTC cars are very similar in essence and it’s those small areas and changes that make the big differences. We’ll be looking to get 80% of the way there with what we have already, and fine-tune the rest as we go.”