Lada down to two cars for the Nürburgring Nordschleife

Lada Sport Rosneft will field just two cars for this weekend’s round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship at the Nürburgring, due to substantial damage to the second of the team’s Vestas in testing last week in Hungary.

The team stayed on to test at the Hungaroring on the Tuesday after the last race, but during the test, 2012 champion Rob Huff experienced front-left suspension failure heading into the first corner at 180km/h, hitting the tyre barriers sideways at speed, with the Vesta WTCC suffering substantial damage, with Huff also hospitalised after the incident.

The team have been left with a lot of work to do to repair both that car, which was originally the designated test car, and Huff’s original race car which was damaged two weeks’ earlier in Marrakech, when Huff’s original race car was hit from behind by team-mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy, who experienced a braking issue into the final corner and ran into the back of him.

As a result of the extensive repair work needed to both of the two cars, and with the next race following the Nordschleife being the team’s home race at Moscow Raceway, the team will field just two cars for Rob Huff and Nordschleife expert Jaap van Lagen this weekend, with Mikhail Kozlovskiy sitting out his second race of the season, and with James Thompson recovering from emergency dental treatment.

Both Thompson and Kozlovskiy are due to return at the next round in Russia at the start of June, though there has been speculation particularly surrounding Thompson’s future involvement with the team, the official position of Lada Sport Rosneft is that Thompson is still part of the team.