Popular Cornishman John George is to race alongside the 2009 BTCC.net Fans Trophy winner Paul O'Neill in the 2010 Dunlop British Touring Car Championship at the wheel of a Techspeed run Sunshine.co.uk Honda Integra. George will race the Integra that Martyn Bell took to a brace of tenth place finishes during the 2009 season.
George, whose best result to date is an eighth place is looking to better than result in 2010, as well as score a minimum of 10 points, 1 point per weekend. George commented on this, saying “My target for this season is to score ten championship points made up of a minimum of one tenth-place finish at each of the ten rounds. My best race result to date is an eighth and if I can better that then great – plus of course you never know what might happen with a reversed grid.”
The Cornishman, who owns the JAG Mobile Phone company has spent the last two years racing a Honda Integra with TH Motorsport, is looking forward to racing a newer Integra to the one he raced in 2009, the one which Dan Eaves won all 3 races at Thruxton in back in 2005.
George said “This will be my fifth season in the BTCC and while my car from 2009 was a trusty old stead she was 2005-spec so getting quite old. The Tech-Speed Integra's are the ex-Eurotech cars from 2008 which have been upgraded again this winter. The difference will be colossal.”
During his time in the BTCC, George has never had a team mate, something he is looking to benefit from “Having a team-mate, particularly one of Paul's calibre, will be a great experience for me. He's always going to make for a very good benchmark and to be able to compare data with someone of his ability can only do me good.”
John has also been honing his skills for the forthcoming season, out in Finland on the Arctic Rally stages, the same as WRC Star Dani Sordo and former Formula One Superstar Kimi Raikkonen. He said about his trip “I saw Kimi had put it into a tree! Sure, I've a few bumps in the BTCC but this weekend I was simply there to do the stages in a pretty basic hire car and work on my left-foot braking. It's a bit of a dark art but if you can do it well then there is definitely time to be gained. I guess we'll find out when the season starts…”
