4th May 2009

Boardman skips Marrakesh to test new car

SUNRED Engineering driver Tom Boardman skipped last weekend's World Touring Car Championship round at Marrakech after electing to undertake some testing an ex-SEAT Sport UK Leon that he will race for the rest of the season.

In the first two rounds of the season in Brazil and Mexico Tom raced a car on-loan from SEAT Sport. However, the decision was taken by Special Tuning UK, which has purchased the ex-BTCC machine and will help SUNRED to run it for the rest of the year, to test the car before the French round instead of racing in Morocco.

"Basically, with us having to convert the car from diesel to petrol and adjusting it from BTCC-spec to WTCC-spec, there wouldn't have been time to do both," Special Tuning UK's team manager Emlyn Evans told AUTOSPORT.

"The next few races are so close together that the time spent in Morocco, would have meant having to go to Pau without even shaking down the new car, which would have been a big risk.”

"In the long-term, both ourselves and Tom thought it would be far more beneficial to let him test the car first, get some mileage under his belt, so that we can head to Pau and then Valencia on the front foot."