British Touring Car Championship Hyundai team Excelr8 Motorsport has switched engine suppliers on the Hyundai i30 N Fastback of Tom Chilton for the rest of the season.
Excelr8 has used bespoke Hyundai engines built by Swindon Powertrain since the 2022 season, when Tom Ingram took the first of his two titles with the team.
But now the decision has been made to equip the machine of Chilton with the customer M-Sport-built TOCA powerplant for this weekend’s round at Silverstone, and the finale at Brands Hatch.
Nineteen-time BTCC race winner Chilton has suffered a series of alternator failures this season, restricting him to 12th in the championship.
Chilton shook down the Hyundai at M-Sport’s Cumbria facility during the week before arriving at Silverstone, where he went sixth fastest in free practice. This was also comfortably the fastest time set on medium-compound Goodyear tyres, albeit a brand-new set.
“We’ve done the whole year with Swindon and it is a great engine,” Chilton told Autosport. “But everybody knows that the ancillaries – the third-party parts that Swindon can’t do anything about – have been letting us down a lot. I just want to do the last two rounds with some reliability and end the season on a high.
“M-Sport are very good at what they do. Everyone assumes that a customer engine is the cheap option, but they’re a leading company – I know that after being shown around their machine shop!
“We’ve still got a bit of refining to do on it, but hopefully we should get that sorted in time for qualifying.”
Photo by: JEP
That has not been the only change at Excelr8, where Osamu Kawashima has stepped in to make his BTCC debut in place of Ricky Collard, who sits fourth in the championship.
The 57-year-old Kawashima, the first driver from his country to take part in the BTCC since a one-off appearance for Japanese great Kunimitsu Takahashi in a Colt Starion Turbo in 1985, firmly brought up the rear of the 23-car field in free practice.
Fastest was the CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon of Dan Rowbottom, who left it until the chequered flag to dislodge Mikey Doble’s Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon from the summit – by just 0.022 seconds.
Further late improvements from Charles Rainford (West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport) and Adam Morgan (CPRL Mercedes) placed them third and fourth respectively at the finish.
Josh Cook sat atop the times for much of the session in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport, before the flurry of quick laps in the final five minutes dropped him to fifth.
Behind Chilton, the top 10 was completed by Dan Lloyd (Restart Racing Hyundai), Aiden Moffat (PMR Audi), Daryl De Leon (WSR BMW) and Gordon Shedden (Speedworks Toyota).
Ash Sutton, who is likely to be crowned champion in Sunday’s races with one round to spare, was 20th fastest in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium. His access to just one second per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost has an enormous effect on the Silverstone National Circuit due to its short lap time (56s) and long straights.
BTCC Silverstone – Practice results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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