Photo: Honda Racing

Honda launch 2012 BTCC campaign

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Honda officially launched their 2012 British Touring Car Championship campaign at their UK manufacturing plant in Swindon this morning. Drivers Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden were in attendance to unveil the livery of the 2012 car in front of the invited media and guests.

ITV’s new BTCC commentator, Toby Moody, was master of ceremonies at the event which saw the covers come off the new NGTC Honda Civic. In addition to this the launch also saw Andrew Taylor, Managing Director of Yuasa Battery Sales (UK) Ltd, announce a three year sponsorship deal with the Team, which will now be known as the Honda Yuasa Racing Team. This announcement reaffirms the commitment of the Team, which last year took a clean sweep of the Drivers’, Teams’ and Manufacturers’ Championships, to the BTCC until the end of 2014.

While the car was only officially launched today the testing program for the newly built NGTC Hondas has already begun. Matt Neal’s Civic has been undergoing extensive on track testing over the last few weeks with Gordon Shedden’s Civic running its first laps at Silverstone last Friday. The Scottish driver was optimistic about the testing:
“One of the things we’ve been very conscious is to try and do as much preparation as we can in the workshop, both aerodynamically and technically. We’ve always said at Honda we wouldn’t put the car on the track until we’re confident of the package we’ve got and it’s a philosophy that’s worked very well. We’ve kept the same philosophy with this car, it looks good, the numbers look good and the engineers are happy with some of the things we’ve come up with. I think when you see the car it looks absolutely mega, it looks awesome. I guess if it goes half as well as it looks we should have a pretty strong year.”

This testing program is set to continue right up until the start of the season with the Honda Yuasa Racing Team returning to Brands Hatch this week. Team Manager Peter Crolla had the following to say about the testing program:
“We tried to get a program together to go to as many of the Championship circuits as we could before the start of the season, we’ve been to five so far with still a few more to go in the next couple of weeks. Testing so far has been good and the feedback from Matt and Gordon has been very positive. There are a few little bits that we’ve got to sort out on the car, but nothing that we wouldn’t expect from a brand new car as we’re running now.”

The public will get their first look at the liveried NGTC Honda Yuasa Racing Team Civics at the 2012 BTCC media day to be held at Silverstone on March 19th.