Thread: BTCC 2010 rumour mill
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Old 21 Aug 2009, 22:14 (Ref:2525771)   #8
helterskelter
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helterskelter should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Quote:
Originally Posted by stedevil View Post
Stranger things have happened. In STCC eg VAG pulled the plug on KMS Audi (5 times STCC champs) before 2008 season and came back with another team 2009 pushing VW-biogas. That can't even be blamed on the world economical issues, just pure marketing strategy.
There must have been some technical reason, probably the fact that the other team had some experience with biogas or that they had already designed an engine using that technology, and they found it useless to pay KMS to develop an engine that another team had already developed (just the first thing I can think of, though).
With GM, the situation is quite different. Vauxhall have pulled the plug because, as Fabrizio says in the interview I linked above, it's more urgent to save a few thousand workers than keep on racing. We're in a situation in which nobody knows if Chevy is going to continue in the World Touring Car Championship, Vauxhall has retired after winning so many titles and RML is running a car that Chevrolet doesn't want to promote anymore, as a privateer effort.
The only situation I'd find reasonable is if Chevy pulls out of the Wtcc and joins the Btcc with the Cruzes, keeping Huffy in and possibly hiring Fabrizio and some paying driver to fill the 3rd vacant seat. That would be an intelligent move, that would make sense, as the Cruze is newer than the Vectra and the Btcc is much cheaper than the World championship. Like that, RML can keep a lot of workers and GM spends less and has more exposure in the UK, as I seem to understand that the Btcc is much more popular than the Wtcc in GB!
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