Motorbase Performance will field just two Ford Focus cars in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton this weekend, with the team’s third car having been damaged beyond repair at Croft.
Whilst Eurotech Racing managed to source a spare Civic chassis from Team Dynamics, Kent-based Motorbase have been unable to build a new chassis in the short six-week timeframe since Croft, where Davenport had to be cut free from his car following a huge multi-car pile-up in qualifying.
The team have now confirmed that it will run just two cars this weekend, for Croft race winner Mat Jackson and Martin Depper, who picked up his best finish of the season in race two in Yorkshire.
“With Davenport’s Focus beyond repair, the team will be fielding just two of its race-winning Ford Focus STs as the season gets back underway this weekend,” read a release from the team.
Davenport is reported to have made “excellent progress” and is already well underway with his physio programme, even though he will not race again in 2017.
“Obviously Croft was a roller coaster weekend for us with Luke’s accident and our first win of the season;” said Team Manager Oly Collins. “The performances were our best of the season and now that we’ve opened our winning account, the plan is to carry on in that manner.
“We turned a bit of a corner with the car at Croft and we’re confident that we can carry that into Snetterton. We’re leading the Independent Teams standings and our aim is to strengthen that position as we head into the business end of the season.
“It’s great to see Luke recovering now and we’re all looking positively to the rest of our season. Snetterton holds a lot of good memories for us. We unveiled the first-ever Motorbase Performance designed and built BTCC car here five years ago and we’ve had some really good results there.
“We enjoyed our strongest race meeting of the season here last year, but that’s all in the past. You can’t rule anyone out this year; such is the strength of the grid and the recent test at Snetterton showed up some interesting results. It’s going to be another very close grid again this weekend.”
Jackson hailed the team’s progress during the recent mid-season Snetterton tyre test, where he ended the two days with the tenth best time, just under nine tenths off the pace, after 79 laps.
“Croft was a real turning point in the season so far,” said Jackson. “There has been so much work behind the scenes at Motorbase to get back the pace we showed earlier in the season.
“We had an extremely successful test at Snetterton during the break when we were able to test many changes to the car and hopefully we can build on our winning ways from Croft.
“We have enjoyed great success at Snetterton over the years and really hope that we can start the second half of the season with a bang!”