After doing some pre-season testing at Autodromo dell’Umbria earlier this week, Solaris Motorsport confirms their plans to race in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series in 2020 on 26 February as they announced that they will be having a technical alliance with fellow Italian squad CAAL Racing for this year’s campaign.
The technical alliance deal will see the two Italian teams, who have raced against each other in the Superstars Series and NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, join forces for the first time as Francesco Sini plans to race the No. 12 NRG Med Chevrolet Camaro as the team’s EuroNASCAR PRO driver once again.
“This is a new chapter in our history and an important occasion for all of us to grow,” said Francesco to euronascar.com. We are very happy about the partnership we signed with CAAL Racing, I’m sure it will bring positive elements to both teams.”
“We know CAAL Racing since a long time, in the last 10 years we battled against each other on the most challenging tracks in Italy and in Europe. We know very well how good Luca and Corrado Canneori (CAAL Racing’s team owners) are and this is exactly the reason why I am sure that joining forces will take us all to a superior level of competitiveness.”
Francesco, the 2014 EuroV8 Series champion, enjoyed a considerably better season in 2019 as he managed to score 4 Top-10 finishes on his way to finish 13th in the overall standings, improving on his results in 2018 where he only managed to finish 18th in the standings despite scoring a podium at Brands Hatch.
The 2019 season also saw Francesco only failing to make the checkered flag twice: Once at Brands Hatch when he failed to make the start due to an engine failure during qualifying, and once at Most after yet another engine issue with the No. 12 Camaro. This improved upon the results in 2018 where Francesco failed to make the checkered flag four times and was forced to withdraw from the races at Tours after he suffered a broken rib due to a crash in practice.
Despite being normally associated with Solaris Motorsport as Francesco acts as the owner of the team alongside his father Roberto and sister Laura, Francesco had in fact previously driven for CAAL Racing in 2010, when he made his Superstars Series debut with the Todi-based team for the first four races before he opted to move to the Romeo Ferraris team in the second half of the season.
CAAL Racing team owner Luca Canneori still remembers Francesco’s stint with CAAL fondly as he is excited with the prospect of having a CAAL-supported car on the grid for 2020.
“We are very happy about this partnership,” said Luca Canneori to euronascar.com. “We worked with Francesco for the first time as a driver 10 years ago, so we can say that this is a little bit of a comeback and this is very rewarding for us. We want to bring as many cars as possible in the front part of the NWES grid.”
Solaris Motorsport will announce their EuroNASCAR 2 class driver on a later date.
Disclaimer: Unless noted, all photos in this article are courtesy of NASCAR Whelen Euro Series.