KTM will return to British GT for the first time since 2011 this year, with Track Focused, which is set to make its championship debut with X-Bow GT4.

Driving the team’s X-Bow GT4 will be the Pro-Am pairing of Mike McCollum and Sean Cooper, who will take on the full-season, stepping up from Britcar, in which they ran together in a KTM last year and finished third in the standings.

That success came a year after Cooper and Track Focused won Britcar’s Sprint championship with a Porsche Cayman GT4. The Cheshire-based outfit has also run cars in Lotus Cup, Fun Cup and GT Cup since its formation 10 years ago.

“Track Focused has always run an eclectic mix of cars in a wide variety of championships but British GT is definitely a step up for us,” said Cooper. “We’ve enjoyed success in other series but myself and especially Mike is now keen to test ourselves against the country’s best GT4 teams and drivers. We know the competition will be tough and that’s exactly why we’re doing it.

“We’ve raced together for seven years and came very close to winning Britcar last season with the KTM. So internally there’s nothing new to worry about, we know where we stand as a team and have raced the car for a season already. We are the only team in the country competing with the KTM so it will be interesting to see how it compares to the established order in British GT.”

The announcement is the first time that one of the Reiter-built XBow coupes has contested the British Championship, the Austrian car builder’s previous efforts all focused around the original open-topped cars.

KTM’s arrival brings this year’s number of GT4 manufacturers to six in British GT for this year, adding to the already impressive list which currently includes Aston Martin, BMW, Ford, McLaren and Mercedes-AMG.