Rotek Racing not ruling out appearance later this year

Rotek Racing will not be on the grid this weekend at Sonoma Raceway, as was originally planned, with their ex-Arena Motorsport Ford Focuses, but the US team which also has a base at the Nürburgring hasn’t ruled out appearing in one of the remaining rounds in Asia later this year.

Rotek Racing purchased two of Arena Motorsport’s Ford Focus WTCC cars earlier this season, with the intention of racing them at their home race this weekend, but have altered their plans following the change in regulations for 2014, which will see the new Super 2000 rules introduced one season earlier than originally projected.

“We’re very disappointed not to have made our home race at Sonoma, particularly for the American and Ford race car fans, many of whom have taken the trouble to contact us to express their support since we made our original announcement,” said Robb Holland, driver and co-team owner at Rotek Racing.

“We’re confident from the testing we’ve already done with the car with just some of the developments and new bits Arena had designed for it bolted on and Mountune’s latest Ford Ecoboost engine upgrades, that the Focus would be much more competitive this season than it was able to show last year.”

“Currently though, we’re still assessing how the new-for 2014 regulations would affect our original plans and until we properly understand the full implications for our team no decision on next year’s program at least will be taken. Nevertheless, while this process has had the effect of stalling the testing program we had started and putting back our 2013 program, we haven’t yet ruled out racing the Focus this season in the WTCC and remain hopeful that we will still do so.”