One Motorsport finally confirms BTCC return with Hondas

British Touring Car Championship team One Motorsport has finally revealed that it is “ready to race” in the series for a 2025 return with Hondas after skipping last season.

The Brackley squad appeared on BTCC organiser TOCA’s list of TBL entrants’ licence holders for 2025 when it was released in early December, with two allocated.

But since then there had been silence from One regarding its plans, leading to some speculation that the team may not compete after all.

“It is with the utmost pride and excitement that I can officially confirm that One Motorsport will be making its return to the BTCC grid this season,” said team owner Steve Dudman.

“When we announced that we would be sitting out the 2024 campaign I’m sure there were many people that thought we may never be back. However, that never entered my mind – the goal was always to come back stronger than ever.”

One’s statement confirms the use of its fleet of Honda Civic Type R machinery, with which it scored 17 race wins using the FK8 model dating back to 2018, when it was known as BTC Racing.

Sources suggest that this could be with the cars raced up to the end of 2022, before One took delivery of the later-build Civic FK8s used by Team Dynamics when that team pulled out of the BTCC before the 2023 campaign.

It is strongly expected that the Civics will use TOCA customer engines from M-Sport rather than the bespoke Honda units, built by Neil Brown Engineering, that powered the Civics in 2023.

As BTC, the team used TOCA power before 2023, but those engines were built by Swindon.

“It goes without saying that having to watch on from the sidelines last year was difficult but it was the right decision for the team in the long run,” Dudman added.

“We certainly haven’t rested on our laurels while being away, with significant investment and development going into the cars over the past year.

“The small team that we’ve had working back at base deserve a lot of credit because they’ve put in a tremendous amount of effort to get us to where we are currently. Now we’re growing that team back to what it was before we took our sabbatical.

“We’re putting the finishing touches on what is without doubt a very strong driver line-up and there are a number of commercial partners – both old and new – that we’ll be working with over the course of the year. It’s an exciting time behind the scenes at the moment.”

Josh Cook, who has scored 16 of his 20 BTCC race wins and four top-six championship finishes in Hondas run by BTC/One, has long been expected to lead that driver line-up.