George admits: It's good to be back!

John George has expressed his delight at making a return to the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship for the 2007 season.

George, who will enter Matt Neal's title winning Honda Integra with TH Motorsport, last raced in the BTCC back in 2004 when he became the pioneer of alternative fuels driving a Honda Civic and then a Peugeot 406 Coupe powered by LPG.

Originally he had been due to 'cook on gas' again the following season as part of a two-car LPG team run by VLR before the well-documented problems surrounding team boss Vic Lee that saw the team fall apart, with George forced to look elsewhere for his motorsport fix before putting a deal together to purchase an Integra for the coming season.

"I'd always planned to come back into the series and I was going to be racing in the following season [2005], but my drive in the Peugeot 307 disappeared when Vic Lee had his problems with the VLR team," he told Crash.net Radio. "It's just taken me until now to find a way back in again!

"I'd seen how well Mike Jordan was doing last season and I though that that was the way to do it, to go out there and buy a really good car. I spoke to Dynamics towards the end of last season and they said that they would be changing cars so we put our name down to make sure we got hold of one. I'm really pleased to be back in the BTCC and it's also nice to be back in a car that should be able to do something this time."

While some teams building new cars to the S2000 rules have yet to hit the track for a shakedown - never mind some serious testing - George has been out on the track since before Christmas getting used to the Integra, and he admitted that it was a world away from the cars he drove in the BTCC first time around, with his focus now being on trying to break into the top ten for the first time.

"The car is really good and handles infinitely better than the Peugeot ever did," he said. "It's very strong and very powerful, the gearbox is very strong and it handles in a totally different way to the Peugeot. Realistically, I'd like to finish one race on each weekend inside the top ten and we'll go from there. In the first few rounds, with everyone developing new cars, I think it will be a lottery and we'll have to see."