BTC Norlin Racing Team Director Bert Taylor says that the opportunity to acquire Honda machinery for the 2018 British Touring Car Championship season was ‘an offer too good to say no to’.
Taylor’s outfit will switch to former factory machinery in 2018 when they race the two former Team Dynamics Civics in the second season of the team’s partnership with Norlin Ventures.
The BTC boss believes that moving on to Honda machinery will help the team to move further up the grid this year, with a plan to building on the outfit’s maiden podium scored in 2017.
“There’s lots of things that we had to think about,” Taylor told TouringCars.Net. “The age of the Chevrolet meant it was no longer an option in the UK, and I think that was the deciding factor.
“It was getting long in the tooth on the grid, and when the Honda came along, we’d seen from the previous year that Eurotech and Honda, as in Team Dynamics themselves, were right at the front at most of the tracks.
“It was an easy alternative, because it was developed by a works team and the offer was too good to say no to it.”
Taylor is targeting a first win for the team in 2018, with regular top ten qualifying positions also being a target.
“To get ourselves a race win and for us to qualify in the top ten at every round is on the shopping list,” added Taylor. “Once you get into the top ten you have a fighting chance of getting in the reverse grid and scoring a good result, whereas now we’d like to do it on merit instead of having to wait for the third race.”
Taylor was also full of praise for partners Norlin, who have helped him to take his team to new heights in the BTCC, having first made an entry in 2006 under the BTC Racing banner.
“If you look at Norlin, the way they’ve sponsored us and how they’ve gone about it, I don’t think in the last five or six years there’s been anybody who’s come along and done it the way we’ve gone and done it. They’ve come along and given us the facilities and the funding to be able to do it at that level.
“I think it did the BTCC a world of good, not just us, having a team come along and do it how we’ve done it, and I think it’s encouraged other people. “
BTC Norlin Racing will run the car with Swindon Engines on board, and the old Chevrolets will not be sold on in the UK, with one car planned to go to China and the other to be used for display purposes in a Norlin hotel.
Taylor was tight-lipped when asked about the team’s 2018 driver line-up, but added that the team were “in the middle of a big sponsorship deal that will determine the driver line-up for the season” and that sponsorship did not have an influence on the decision to go with Honda for 2018.