(Toronto, Canada) — Compass360 Racing (C360R) today released details of an expansion of it’s highly-successful Grand-Am program. Ten-year veterans of GA’s Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Street Tuner series, the team will field two Grand Sport-class Subaru WRX STi’s in 2014, alongside its championship-winning Honda Civic Si effort.
“We’re really excited to be expanding our CTSCC program next year,” enthused Team Principal Karl Thomson. “We’ve had a lot of success in Grand-Am over the years, and after a decade in ST it’s a good time to move up to GS. We feel the Subarus provide a strong platform, and are a logical extension of our Honda squad.”
Technical Director Ray Lee agrees. “We’ve got some strong technical partnerships in place to help develop what is already a really good car. We’ll be doing a bunch of testing this fall, working on both performance and reliability, and will show up at Daytona ready for battle.”
The move to GS will complement C360R’s Street Tuner program in 2014, with the team remaining committed to its continuing partnership with Honda. “We’ve been working with HPD (Honda Performance Development) since 2006, winning multiple championships in both CTSCC and the Pirelli World Challenge, and we’ll still be focussed on winning more with the Civics,” remarked Lee. “If we can be in the middle of the GS fight as well, so much the better.”
Interestingly, the genesis of the Subaru project began back in 2009, when C360R was tasked with building a Mitsubishi Evo X as a GS-class proof-of-concept. The final product, while shown to be a competitive package, ultimately wasn’t accepted for homologation by the series. “We thought the idea of a smaller displacement, turbocharged Japanese sedan competing with the bigger six- and eight-cylinder GS cars made the series pretty interesting,” said Thomson. “With the Subarus, we have another chance to demonstrate that.”
The squad is currently working on their GS and ST driver line-ups, and expect to be able to announce the drivers of one of the Subarus at the CTSCC season finale at Lime Rock Park, Connecticut in a few weeks time. “The silly season has started pretty early for us this year,” noted Thomson. “We’re trying to put together strong pairings in both the Subarus and the Hondas, and we’ll see how they come together over the next little while.”
In the meanwhile, Lee and Thomson hope to come out of Lime Rock with another Driver and Team Championship. The team’s No 75 FamiliesForHope.org car, driven by Kyle Gimple and Ryan Eversley, currently sits in second place in the Street Tuner standings, just eight points behind first place. “While we are excited about our plans for 2014, we’re flat-out trying to win with Kyle and Ryan,” said Lee. “That’s our focus for the next three weeks.”
Compass360 Racing (C360R) is the motorsports division of Compass360 Brand Architects, a Toronto-based firm offering marketing expertise to clients in diverse industries across North America. The team, with support from Honda Performance Development (HPD), fields front-running Honda Civic Si’s in Grand-Am’s Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, winning series Championships in 2010, 2009, 2007 and 2006. C360R also won World Challenge Touring Car Championships in 2013, 2012 and 2011, and the Canadian Touring Car Championship in 2010. For details visit http://C360R.com.
PR inquiries should be directed to Karl Thomson. +1.416.465.2299 x21 or karl@compass360.com.
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