Following some weeks of speculation about Ross Curnow’s 2007 plans, the Formula BMW race winner has talked further about the difficulties he is facing: “It’s simply a problem of funding. We’ve had a lot of interest from teams but we just haven’t the budget to move forward at this time.”

The Salisbury-based driver was known to have had several approaches from F3 teams and discussions were well advanced for a top drive. “When we couldn’t produce the finance for that,” Ross said, “we started to look at International Formula Masters. This would have had the benefit of giving me some experience of European circuits and we had serious interest from a UK-based team but again, we couldn’t raise sufficient funding.”

“We have some people who have been working very hard on the corporate sponsorship front and although there’s been interest, we’ve been unable to secure a deal which would give us a competitive drive this year. There is still the possibility of a syndicate of backers becoming involved but this would involve a more strategic partnership and discussions on that are longer term.”

Curnow went on to confirm that he’s decided, therefore, to take a break from racing for the remainder of this year. “I’ll continue with my driver coaching work and may get involved in some testing. If the opportunity for a one-off drive does emerge, that would be great but the focus now will be to produce finance for 2008.”