Turkington loses independent status

Date published : 01 Aug 2010 - 06:45:29

Colin Turkington is no longer considered an independent class entrant in the World Touring Car Championship.The reigning BTCC champion joined the WTCC two rounds ago in Portugal, and scored two podiums last time out at Brands Hatch. After he qualified third for this weekend's first race at Brno, series bosses stripped him of independent status."To establish the regulations for the 2010 Independents' Trophy, it was decided to make the turbodiesel cars not eligible - because of their performances - and the race-by-race entries eligible," said WTCC promoter Marcello Lotti. "Since then things happened that made those decisions inappropriate."The dispute over the 'old' and 'new' cars and the arrival of a race-by-race entered car [Turkington] that has even better performance than the turbodiesels. Therefore I took the decision to make these changes in order to preserve the spirit of the trophy, and also not to unbalance the competition among the full season competitors."Turkington will now no longer score points and win prize money in the independents' class, and will be competing only for outright honours - as is the case for Norbert Michelisz, Michel Nykjaer and Fredy Barth in their SEAT Leon TDis.Independent class drivers will also no longer score addition points for each point they score in the overall classification.