Jelley to make another BTCC return in Honda

Four-time British Touring Car Championship race winner Stephen Jelley is to make a surprise return to the series in 2025.

The 42-year-old, who spent last season in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, has taken the second seat at One Motorsport to pilot a Honda Civic Type R.

It reunites Jelley with One team leader Josh Cook, eight years after the duo partnered each other for the first four rounds of the 2017 season at Team Parker Racing.

“The Carrera Cup is great and I was keeping my options open to be honest,” Jelley told Autosport.

“But it was obvious to me last year, when I was entertaining personal sponsors and people at the racetrack, that the draw is the BTCC, and the costs for the BTCC have come down.

“I was waiting to see if I could get a bit of a deal, and teams came out of the woodwork early doors and the budgets involved are not much more than a Carrera Cup budget, so it starts to become a no-brainer – and you get to do two extra rounds. It’s great to be back!”

Jelley added that he was impressed by the work that has taken place at the Brackley premises of One Motorsport.

The team confirmed last week that it will be using the customer TOCA engine built by M-Sport and installed in the Civic FK8s it used up until the end of the 2022 season rather than the newer-build cars it raced in 2023, before its one-season sabbatical last year.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Josh had started pestering me and calling me up! He was saying, ‘We’ve got a good thing going on and we want to get a team-mate who’s going to be useful.’ And I thought it would be quite a good driver pairing.

“I went down to have a look and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. You can tell that they’ve pressed the green button and started going again, and they’ve done a fair bit of development on the car.

“All the guys that were working for the team before have quickly come back. They’ve all wanted to be part of it and there are some really good guys.”

Jelley, whose BTCC success has all come in rear-wheel-drive BMWs, added that his shared experience with Cook of the 2017 Ford Focus – before the West Countryman returned mid-season to the Triple Eight MG squad – has not deterred him from front-wheel drive, a format he had never raced before and has not done since.

“I’ve got less experience in front-wheel drive, but I’m not so worried,” he argued. “The Focus was a complete snotter, but the Honda has got good pedigree as quite a forgiving car.

“When I was there with Josh at the same time we weren’t too dissimilar, so I thought maybe I’ll have another go.

“If I’m going to drive in the BTCC after this year, I’d better sort my front-wheel drive out, but I’m not putting too much pressure on myself.”

Power Maxed on the grid after all

Mikey Doble, Evans Halshaw Power Maxed Racing

Photo by: JEP

Elsewhere in the Independents class, Power Maxed Racing will be present in the BTCC this season despite the recent loss of its title sponsor.

The Midlands squad, which swept to a clean sweep of Independents crowns in 2024, will scale down to a single Vauxhall Astra after acquiring new backing from Motor Parts Direct.

PMR boss Adam Weaver was moved to put out a statement in February suggesting that the team’s participation was looking highly doubtful, so the news will be highly welcome as the BTCC looks set to comfortably exceed its 20-car average grid figure from 2024.

Although reigning Independents champion Aron Taylor-Smith’s move to Toyota team Speedworks Motorsport was almost simultaneous to PMR’s February statement, 2024 Jack Sears Trophy title winner Mikey Doble continues to be strongly linked to a third season in the Astra.

“This is something that I have tried to make happen for a number of years, therefore I’m incredibly happy that it is now going to become reality,” said Weaver of the Motor Parts Direct tie-up.

“I know Darren [Wykes, managing director], Kevin [Blazey, marketing director] and many of the team across Motor Parts Direct as I have worked with them for years, so it’s really exciting to be starting this journey with such a strong relationship already established.”