Snodland’s Simon Horrobin will join leading team SV Racing in the Renault Clio Cup this weekend at Rockingham for his debut in the series.

Set to end the recent dominance of Team Pyro, if Cheshire-based SV Racing is 181 points ahead at the conclusion of round 15 on Saturday afternoon it will secure its maiden crown with three races still to spare. As things currently stand, the team has a 179 point lead over reigning champions Pyro.

Having expanded to five cars for the previous event at Knockhill a fortnight ago, SV Racing with KX retains a quintet of fourth generation Clios for the penultimate event of the 2014 season albeit with Snodland racer Horrobin competing in the car piloted by Jamie Clarke (Formby) north of the border.

The 48-year-old businessman first became involved with motorsport in his late teens, debuting in karts at the age of 17, and enjoyed high levels of success with several championship victories such as success in the Rye House Gold Cup.

His racing career then had to be parked on the sidelines when a frightening industrial accident caused Horrobin to be hospitalised for months – serious injuries sustained when a tanker he was working on exploded.

Thankfully recovering fully, he returned to competitive motorsport in 2011 in the 4two Cup for race prepared SMART Brabus cars and secured numerous podiums and wins over the next two seasons, including a memorable 24 Hour race success at Spa-Francorchamps.

Over the past two years, Horrobin has been competing in the Ford Fiesta Championship where he has been a privateer entrant. Securing the Masters class title and finishing sixth overall in 2013, with a best result of third place, this year he is currently fifth in the standings and leads the Masters.

As well as racing at Rockingham, Horrobin is also set to contest the final two rounds of the Renault UK Clio Cup season at Brands Hatch next month. He will team-up, of course, with series leader Josh Cook (Bath), Ant Whorton-Eales (Lichfield), Ash Hand (Nuneaton) and Alex Morgan (Reading).

Speaking about having Simon in the car Team Princpal Buxton said: “We’re obviously very happy to have Simon in the car for both Rockingham and Brands Hatch, it’s going to be a big learning curve for him this weekend as his first test in the car will be conducted during the race weekend on Friday. As well as learning as much as he can, hopefully he can help us with the team championship.

“I’m really pumped for this weekend. From our point of view, to have a sniff of winning the team trophy after [Team] Pyro having won it for so many years is massive. We’ve been trying to break the stranglehold since we first came into Clios in 2011, if we can wrap it up on Saturday or Sunday it’ll be very emotional for me and everyone at SV Racing.”

Following pre-event testing tomorrow, Friday, 5th September, qualifying for rounds 15 and 16 will take place at 10.50 on Saturday, 6th September, with the first race of the weekend getting underway at 15.00. On Sunday, 7th September, race two will commence at 13.00 and will be screened live on ITV4 and ITV4 HD with live streaming online at the www.itv.com/btcc website.