The Cheshire team has expanded to three Toyota Corolla GR Sports for 2023, with 10-time race winner Rory Butcher and Ricky Collard joined by Ciceley Motorsport BMW refugee George Gamble.
Speedworks had used the TOCA customer engine since its arrival in the BTCC in 2011, but pressed the green light on a bespoke powerplant from the Toyota range last September, with BMW and Honda supplier Neil Brown Engineering handling the programme.
This has been made possible by the investment of long-time team supporter John Gilbert, who competed in endurance events including the Dubai 24 Hours at the wheel of Aston Martin GT4 machinery with the squad several years ago and became a director of Speedworks in January of this year.
“It’s not just John’s investment, we’re at a point where we need control over our own destiny,” Dick told Autosport while being interviewed for a feature to run in the magazine and website (see below).
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“With three cars it makes more sense to have your own engine programme – it means that it’s going to be quicker before you’ve made sense out of the investment over a number of years.”
Dick, who along with wife Amy remains one of three shareholders in Speedworks, added that the team had been evaluating its own engine project since the era when it was running 2022 champion Tom Ingram.
“For a number of years we’ve looked at the possibilities,” he said. “It’s not just that we’ve gone, ‘OK, we’re only going to do the TOCA engine.’
“I would probably say for the last five years we’ve evaluated not just the cost side, whether it makes sense, but whether we’re going to gain what we need to out of it.
Source: Autosport