WestCoast Racing Team Manager James Nixon says that the team’s decision to race in the TCR UK series at Croft was ‘still the right decision’ even though points leader Dan Lloyd suffered misfortune in race two and a reduction in his championship lead.
The Swedish team only made the call to continue in the UK in the week prior to the event and had to change their plans to run with two Volkswagen Golfs and one Honda Civic borrowed from another team.
Whilst the plan to race at Croft resulted in a maiden victory and fifth podium finish of the season for Andreas Bäckman, championship leader Dan Lloyd saw his advantage in the series eroded after a retirement in race two caused by a damper failure.
Lloyd had earlier had to contend with a grid penalty in the first race, which saw him recover to finish in third having started in eighth at the back of the grid.
Reflecting on the weekend, which now sees Lloyd head into the season finale with only a 31-point lead, Team Manager James Nixon still believes they made the right call to race in Yorkshire.
“It’s been a fantastic weekend for Andreas – a pretty perfect weekend for him,” said Nixon to TouringCars.Net. “The team was good to choose the Honda, which was good on the compensation weight, so it was the right car to use this weekend.
“It was easy to work with Sean Walkinshaw Racing and the teams worked well together, so it was good for Andreas for sure.
“With Dan it was a late decision to come here and even with the bad result it was still the right decision; it would have been much worse without coming to Croft.
“We’re looking forward to Donington, where it will be a good fight as he’s 31 points in front going there. I think the compensation weights will be the same as here, so at least we can fight.
“We came here as a bit of a damage limitation exercise and unfortunately with race two we lost 40 points which we shouldn’t have done.
“It would be unjustified for Dan not to win the championship.”