FPR confirm three cars is the limit

Ford Performance Racing confirm they won’t be running any more than three cars next season, putting paid to rumours that James Courtney would join the team in a Pepsi sponsored entry in 2011.

Speculation was rife last week that James Courtney was bound for FPR in a fourth car with Pepsi branding, in addition to the Orrcon Steel backed No.5 car for Mark Winterbottom, the Bottle-O backed No.55 for Paul Dumbrell, and the Trading Post backed No.6 destined for HRT refugee Will Davison.

Australian Motorsport News reports however that the fourth car was set to use the Racing Entitlement Contract (REC) from Walkinshaw Racing which was recently confirmed to be up for sale. It now appears however that the championship organisers intend to reclaim that REC and reduce the field to 28 cars , which jeapordised the fourth FPR Falcon.

As a result, FPR team manager Tim Edwards confirmed to BigPond Sport that the team will remain a three car effort next season

“We had an option to run an additional customer car for next year and that deal was done but unfortunately for the customer that we were planning on working with, other pieces of his pie have fallen apart,” said Edwards.

“It’s rather disappointing because it would have been nice to have a fourth car with all the boxes ticked but we’ll just put our head down and focus on running three cars and being a three car superteam as opposed to a four car superteam next year.”

With the deal collapsing at the last minute, it’s believed Courtney’s manager Alan Gow has arranged a last minute switch for his charge to return to the Holden Racing Team for 2011, though this is yet to be confirmed by HRT or Courtney.