British Touring Car Championship
By John Wouters, Marketing Manager, Prinsautogas
British motorsport underwent a revolution this year with the introduction of autogas powered cars to compete in the Dunlop 2010 MSA British Touring Car Championship. In a six figure sponsorship deal, Team AON’s star racers, Tom Onslow-Cole and Tom Chilton, will take the wheel of new Ford Focus STs powered by a specially designed Prins Liquid LPG system on a Mountune built Duratec 2.0 engine. The LPG component parts, adapted from the soon to be released Prins LI conversion kit, have been hand built for the project by Prins Autogassystemen B.V. of Holland.
With the season launch on Tuesday 23 March, the test cars put in an impressive performance on the Spanish and UK test tracks with LPG technology consistently delivering performance on par with petrol and the added bonus of considerably lower base petrol emissions – making Team AON the greenest team on the track! The launch of the first competitive autogas run car specially developed to suit a motorsport environment is testament to the hard work that has gone into improving performance for autogas vehicles. In a climate where motorsports is under intense scrutiny for its contribution to carbon emissions it’s never been a better time to show how autogas, a greener alternative fuel, can help to power the sport with a reduced environmental footprint. And the best thing is – similar technology can be applied to nearly all petrol vehicles – on and off the track.”
One of the race cars made history during round two of the 2010 BTCC season when it took the first pole position for an autogas powered vehicle in the BTCC. Tom Chilton managed to post an excellent lap time, bringing the ultra low emissions vehicle to the front of the Rockingham grid. The second autogas Focus, driven by Tom Onslow-Cole, also recorded a good lap time, starting on the second row of the grid.
Mountune Racing has been working steadily since the end of 2009, developing and refining the new race engine, working closely with both Team Aon and the team’s new fuel supplier Calor and their LPG injection hardware colleagues at Prins in order to develop a competitive race engine fuelled by autogas. It is indeed a breakthrough that Mountune Racing has been able to contribute towards greener motorsport by the development of a competitive race engine fuelled by autogas, which was confirmed with the impressive results.
Tom Chilton stormed to an emphatic victory in Race 1 of the British Touring Car Championship thrash on the Kent circuit's rain-soaked Grand Prix track - the first in ten years for a Ford. Race 2 went to his team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole - second across the line after a fine third place in Race 1.
