James Thompson’s car excluded from the last two meetings

LADA Sport Lukoil’s James Thompson has been excluded from the results of the Hungarian and Slovakian rounds of this year’s FIA World Touring Car Championship, after his engine seal was found to have been breached without a request made to the stewards.

The Russian team had continued to test at the Slovakiaring following the last round of the Championship two weeks ago, where the British driver, who’s enduring what he describes as his worst season of his career so far with car which has a severe handling issue, suffered an engine failure.

The handling issues have been confirmed by team-mate Rob Huff, who also shared the car at a private test after the Hungaroring, where Thompson drove Huff’s car in a back-to-back test.

With the team having breached the engine seals, the car has been excluded from the two meetings where the car competed with that engine, being the third and fourth meetings of the season.

There’s no change to the drivers’ standings, with Thompson’s car finishing a best of 13th in the three races (with the second Slovakiaring race cancelled).

Due to the change of engine, Thompson will also start last for the first race this weekend, no matter where he qualifies. His team-mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy has also changed his engine and will join him on the back row for race one.