Porsche Carrera Cup star takes final WSR seat for BTCC debut

Porsche Carrera Cup GB runner-up Charles Rainford has secured a plum seat on the West Surrey Racing BMW group for the 2025 British Touring Automotive Championship marketing campaign.

The 26-year-old from Sussex has taken the ultimate seat in WSR’s four-car squad of 330i M Sport equipment, shortly after the team had to part company with its quadruple champion Colin Turkington due to commercial reasons.

Rainford will line up in WSR’s two-car LKQ Euro Automotive Components subset alongside the skilled Aiden Moffat, with reigning BTCC champion Jake Hill and collection sophomore Daryl DeLeon occupying the remaining seats.

Which means that Hill is the one one among WSR’s 2024 driver line-up persevering with into the brand new season with the group.

Rainford, the son of historic racer Shaun, minimize his car-racing enamel in small-capacity historic sportscar equipment earlier than transferring into trendy motorsport in 2021 within the Carrera Cup GB with the household CCK Motorsport group. He claimed the pro-am title in 2022, throughout which he received a race total, earlier than rising his whole victory tally to 4 throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons. He narrowly misplaced out in final 12 months’s title chase to BTCC race winner George Gamble.

“I’m so excited, not simply to race within the BTCC, however with probably the most profitable group on the grid,” stated Rainford, who bolsters an more and more intriguing subject within the Jack Sears Trophy sub-division for drivers with a most of 1 podium end within the BTCC.

“A few of my earliest recollections of racing are of watching the BTCC with my dad, so to be there myself feels superb. Strolling into WSR HQ for the primary time and seeing the trophies and the names on the wall like [Ayrton] Senna, [Nigel] Mansell, [Andy] Priaulx and Turkington was unbelievable.

“I’d like to see my identify up there sooner or later and if we will win the Jack Sears Trophy this 12 months, that will be a terrific begin.”

WSR group boss Dick Bennetts added: “He’s had an uncommon path to the BTCC, however from what we’ve seen of him in Carrera Cup GB and, particularly, the calibre of driver he’s overwhelmed there, we’re assured he has the velocity and talent mandatory to show his potential into on-track success.”

In frequent with new team-mate Hill, Rainford can also be a race winner in Group 1 Ford Capri equipment – he has notched up 5 wins on the Manufacturers Hatch Tremendous Touring Energy competition over the previous two years aboard a Faberge-liveried Capri paying tribute to the automotive by which Stuart Graham was a BTCC race winner within the late Nineteen Seventies.