Here is a wild late-season twist in the British Touring Car Championship paddock: as Autosport reports, Excelr8 Motorsport has swapped engine suppliers on the Hyundai i30 N Fastback of Tom Chilton for the final two weekends of the year at Silverstone and Brands Hatch.
Since Tom Ingram claimed the first of his two titles with the squad in the 2022 season, Excelr8 has relied on bespoke Hyundai engines built by Swindon Powertrain. But repeated alternator failures have plagued the nineteen-time BTCC race winner Chilton this year, dropping him down to 12th in the standings and forcing a change to the customer M-Sport-built TOCA powerplant.
"We've done the whole year with Swindon and it is a great engine," Chilton explained. "But everybody knows that the ancillaries – the third-party parts that Swindon can't do anything about – have been letting us down a lot. I just want to do the last two rounds with some reliability and end the season on a high."
Before heading to Silverstone, Chilton shook down the newly-fitted machine at M-Sport's Cumbria facility. The changes immediately bore fruit on track, as he put the Hyundai sixth fastest in free practice—comfortably leading the times among runners on a brand-new set of medium-compound Goodyear tyres. "M-Sport are very good at what they do. Everyone assumes that a customer engine is the cheap option, but they're a leading company – I know that after being shown around their machine shop! We've still got a bit of refining to do on it, but hopefully we should get that sorted in time for qualifying," Chilton added.
That was not the only shake-up inside the Excelr8 garage. Osamu Kawashima stepped in to make his BTCC debut, taking the seat normally occupied by Ricky Collard, who currently sits fourth in the championship. The 57-year-old Kawashima became the first driver from his country to compete in the series since Japanese great Kunimitsu Takahashi drove a Colt Starion Turbo in a one-off appearance back in 1985, though he firmly brought up the rear of the 23-car field in free practice.
At the sharp end of the practice times, Dan Rowbottom put his CPRL Mercedes A35 Saloon on top right at the checkered flag, edging out Mikey Doble’s Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon by just 0.022 seconds. Further late improvements pushed Charles Rainford (West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport) and Adam Morgan (CPRL Mercedes) into third and fourth. Josh Cook had paced the field for much of the session in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport before a late flurry dropped him to fifth, just ahead of Chilton in sixth. Ash Sutton, meanwhile, ended the session 20th fastest in his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium as he contends with running on just one second per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost around the short 56s Silverstone National Circuit.
