Speedworks Motorsport is targeting a “sizeable step” up the BTCC grid in 2015 signing widely respected experienced engineer Geoff Kingston for next season’s campaign.

Kingston joins the Cheshire-based squad from Team BMR, where as chief engineer he was widely credited with tempting touring car legend Alain Menu back to the series, as well as overseeing two race wins for Aron Smith.

Kingston’s laudable CV includes helping Jaguar to the World Sportscar Championship crown and Le Mans 24 Hours glory in the late 1980s, before contributing to Benetton’s race-winning success with Michael Schumacher in Formula 1 in 1993.

He says he’s hoping to help tackle a common issue for the team over the last couple of seasons – dropping back in the races from strong grid positions.

Kingston said: “I was looking for a fresh challenge like this, and when it came up, it just seemed like the perfect fit at the right time.

“The one thing Speedworks have perhaps lacked until now is a little bit of experience – which is what I can bring to the table. The differences between these cars are so minimal that the skill is in finding the limit from what’s available; that can be pretty elusive – but the beauty of the NGTC regulations is that everybody has the same opportunity, which means it all comes down to how you use it.

“Every race engineer’s brief is to provide a platform – the car – to enable the driver to exploit the available grip from the tyres over the appropriate period of time. In the BTCC, this means two different situations – qualifying, where outright performance is required without too much thought to durability, and then of course the races, where we are looking for both performance and durability over a longer distance.”

Speedworks team principal Christian Dick said: “From the outside looking in, I think Geoff has done a fantastic job this year, and he has a long history of success both within and beyond the BTCC. If you look at some of the teams he has worked with, his credentials speak for themselves.

“We are already there-or-thereabouts and regular contenders for the top ten, and Geoff has lots of interesting ideas that he wants to try out that will hopefully move us into a race-winning position. We have no intention of merely making up the numbers, but by the same token, we have a fairly limited budget, so it’s all about maximising our resources and really extracting the very best out of what we have at our disposal. We are optimistic that our combined efforts will enable us to take a sizeable step up the grid.

“We are building a new shell for the Avensis for 2015 and have a lot of development work ahead and plenty of upgrades in the pipeline, with a particular focus on weight-saving, weight distribution and making the car’s cooling system more efficient. We will also be looking closely at the bodywork and aerodynamics and doing a lot of testing with the dampers, which were a bit of an Achilles’ heel for us during the second half of this year and affected tyre life over a race distance.”