General News
03/Feb/2010
George to partner O'Neill at sunshine/Tech-Speed
John George will partner Paul O’Neill in the sunshine.co.uk with Tech-Speed team in 2010’s Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.
The Guernsey-domiciled Cornishman has driven his own Honda Integra – sponsored by his chain of mobile phone shops JAG – for the past three seasons but will now switch to one of the Tech-Speed outfit’s cars.
He’s clearly taking the forthcoming season with great seriousness – at the weekend he was honing his left-foot braking skills on the same snowy Arctic Rally stages in Finland as Citroen World Rally team drivers Dani Sordo and Kimi Raikkonen!
And the 48-year-old told btcc.net: “My target for this season is to score ten championship points made up of a minimum of one tenth-place finish at each of the ten rounds. My best race result to date is an eighth and if I can better that then great – plus of course you never know what might happen with a reversed grid.”
For George, it will be the first time he has had a team-mate in the BTCC but he believes the move to Marvin Humphries’ Tech-Speed outfit can only be of benefit to his performances.
He added: “This will be my fifth season in the BTCC and while my car from 2009 was a trusty old stead she was 2005-spec so getting quite old. The Tech-Speed Integras are the ex-Eurotech cars from 2008 which have been upgraded again this winter. The difference will be colossal.
“Having a team-mate, particularly one of Paul’s calibre, will be a great experience for me. He’s always going to make for a very good benchmark and to be able to compare data with someone of his ability can only do me good.”
Meanwhile, George’s trip to Finland saw him fly his own plane to Manchester airport from where he boarded a commercial flight to Helsinki.
He said: “I saw Kimi had put it into a tree! Sure, I’ve a few bumps in the BTCC but this weekend I was simply there to do the stages in a pretty basic hire car and work on my left-foot braking. It’s a bit of a dark art but if you can do it well then there is definitely time to be gained. I guess we’ll find out when the season starts…”
