Trade Price Cars Racing managing director Dan Kirby says his team isn’t planning to “make up the numbers” during the 2019 British Touring Car Championship season.

Trade Price Cars acquired a pair of Audi S3s from the AmD Tuning team over the winter and will now work alongside Shaun Hollamby’s outfit during the season ahead – with AmD helping to run the cars as technical partner.

Jake Hill has already been announced as the first driver for the new programme as he returns to the series after sitting out the second half of 2019, with talks ongoing with a number of drivers over the second seat.

Speaking at the Autosport International Show in Birmingham, where the first car was revealed in an interim livery, Kirby said he was excited about the prospects for the new programme and was confident that the Audi would prove to be a strong package during the year ahead.

“This new BTCC programme is a big commitment for us but something we are hugely excited about,” he told TouringCarTimes. “To be in this position when it was only five years ago that I started racing myself is amazing, and to unveil the first car is an fantastic feeling.

“We’re working hard with Shaun and the guys at AmD to make sure that when we get to Brands Hatch, we can hit the ground running. We aren’t planning to just make up the numbers and we’ll be doing everything that we can to push towards the front.

“Jake is a driver who we feel can help us achieve that, and he is working hard personally to make sure he is at peak performance for the start of the new season. He is someone we have worked with before and who has also worked with AmD so there is no step into the unknown; we all know exactly what we are getting from each other.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in the second seat and to be honest, we could have signed someone before now who would have brought a big budget with them. However, whilst we do need someone with budget, we have to strike a balance in terms of getting a driver who can also help us to achieve our goals and who will be the right person to represent us both on and off track.

“With that in mind, we’re talking to an number of people about the second car and hope to make a decision in the coming weeks.”