Pictured: Stewart Lines. Click to open hi-resolution version

NEWS RELEASE: 27 MARCH 2014

MAXIMUM MOTORSPORT REACHES MAXIMUM CAPACITY

New team Maximum Motorsport is to expand to run four cars during its maiden season in the Milltek Sport Volkswagen Racing Cup. In addition to Sciroccos for Chris Panayiotou and 2013 race winner Stewart Lines, the Midlands squad is close to completing the build of a third Scirocco and will also prepare the Golf GTI of three-season VW Cup veteran Cameron Thompson.

Thompson is looking forward to life with his new team: “I get on well with Stewart and he has the right people with him, so I am hoping that it will be a good move. I’ve never really had the time before now to put enough into my racing, and I’ve never had much out of it as a result. Hopefully with Stewart’s help and with me putting in more effort then I can get some better results – although it’s looking like it will be tough to do that this season because of the big field.”

Thompson is backed by Evesham-based motor industry training centre JVCE Academy.

“We are very pleased to welcome Cameron to Maximum,” said team boss Lines, “and we hope that we will be able to bring him on and help him to score some consistently good results. We are also pleased to announce that we will have a third Scirocco available – it is just being finished off in the workshop now.

“Ideally we would like to find a driver for the full season, but it will be available for race-by-race rental also.”

Lines, who achieved his maiden VW Cup race win in 2013 and placed third in the championship, is set to begin dry-weather testing in earnest later this week. “We have done a lot of work to my car over the winter to get it up to spec, and we are now ready to put some miles in with it. I’ve been out three or four times already over the winter, mostly in the wet, which was useful because we didn’t have a baseline wet set-up before.”

He adds that Hertfordshire-based Panayiotou a veteran of the Clio Cup, Britcar and Mini Challenge, was enjoying his new car: “Chris has been out a couple of times and he’s happy and ready to go. Hopefully we can both go out there at the first round and get stuck in, but it won’t be easy – it’s a bit of an open championship this year and there are lots of decent drivers and potential race winners. The competition will be tough, but I’d rather have it like that.”

The opening rounds of the 14-race Milltek Sport Volkswagen Racing Cup take place on Easter Monday (21 Apr) at the Oulton Park circuit in Cheshire.