Ian Robinson will remain with reigning champion team Total Control Racing for a second season in the Ginetta GT5 Challenge this year after the squad today, Friday, 26th February, confirmed the Cambridge businessman will team-up with young hot-shoe Matt Chapman.
Wednesbury-based TCR, of course, has been the team to beat in the hugely popular Ginetta series for the past two years with George Gamble claiming the title in 2014 and James Kellett ensuring the champion’s trophy remained in TCR’s possession last season.
Robinson, who made a welcome return to competitive track action last year after almost 20 years on the racing sidelines, is delighted to be returning to the championship for 2016 and is aiming to build on everything he learned last year.
“TCR is a great team and I’m so pleased to be with them for another season”, commented the 45-year-old, “Lee [Brookes – team principal] and all of the guys provide such a good spirit and the really good thing about TCR is, you know the car is always going to be as good as it can be with the set-up. I’m aiming for the top five or six each weekend this year.
“I was generally pleased with how competitive I was becoming last season and it was very beneficial having James [Kellett] and Callum [Pointon] as team-mates, they helped push me on and I know Matt [Chapman] will do the same this year. I made a few too many mistakes on the first lap of races last season, which cost me a lot of championship points, but I’m aiming to put that right this year.”
Robinson, who runs specialist electronic and mechanical instrumentation business IMC Group, ended the 2015 season 12th overall in the driver standings with a brace of top six finishes and five other top 10 results.
Team boss Lee Brookes, who competed against Robinson in the mid-1990s in the Clio Cup, is very much looking forward to extending the partnership into 2016 and has high hopes of a competitive second season in the GT5 Challenge for the Cambridgeshire racer.
“We’re really happy Ian is staying with the team, he did a great job last year – you wouldn’t have had any idea he’d been away from racing for 20 years”, said Brookes, “He made some big steps forward and definitely had the pace to be in the top six most weekends, this year we’ve got every confidence he’ll be even quicker and will have a great chance to improve on the top sixes he took in 2015.”
Alongside its regular appearances on the support package to the British GT Championship, this year the Ginetta GT5 Challenge will also make guest outings for the first time at two Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race weekends – the first at Thruxton in Hampshire on 7th/8th May and the second at Croft in North Yorkshire on 18th/19th June.
Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit in Kent will host the opening rounds of the GT5 Challenge over the weekend 16th/17th April with the championship reaching its conclusion at Donington Park Grand Prix Circuit in Leicestershire on 10th/11th September.
