Stewart Lines will take up the vacant Maximum Motorsport seat for the remainder of the current British Touring Car Championship season, after the team were unable to find a younger alternative.
Having started the season with Josh Cook as their sole driver, Maximum were forced to find a last-minute replacement for the Croft meeting when Cook departed to return to the MG squad.
Swede Dennis Strandberg was called in as a last-minute replacement, but Maximum then turned their attention to finding a driver with the budget for the second half of the season.
With no suitably-funded driver being found, 54-year-old Lines has taken the decision to step back in to the driving seat himself, in order to provide the consistency needed to comply with the outfit’s TOCA BTCC Licence [TBL].
“We tried to make it work with a younger driver, and I thought the summer break would have given us time to find another racer with some budget, but that hasn’t been the case,” said Lines, who raced in the 2015 and 2016 seasons full-time.
“Rather than being left high and dry, the best option was for me to do the rest of the year to make sure we can fulfil our commitment to be on the grid.”