West Surrey Racing BMW have announced that Daryl DeLeon will join the team for the 2025 British Touring Car season.  DeLeon who finished in 18th place in the 2024 standings with Un-Limited Motorsport said that: “It’s a dream come true to join WSR and to be with the best team in the BTCC after only one full season in touring cars. I still can’t quite believe it.”

After a year where DeLeon was one of the surprise revelations in the championship the Filipino/British racer makes the move to rear-wheel-drive racing for the first time on the BTCC grid, having previously competed in Radicals and British Endurance with cars in that configuration.

DeLeon is the second signing for the squad after the retention of reigning champion Jake Hill on the MB Motorsport side of the garage.

Team owner Dick Bennetts said: “We’re very pleased to welcome Daryl to WSR for the 2025 season. He’s impressed us with what he’s achieved across the year and has a lot of the raw potential and determination that we’ve seen in a number of young drivers that have gone on to achieve great things in our cars and beyond. Given his background racing rear-wheel drive cars he should have little trouble getting used to our race-winning BMW. We look forward to helping him develop and move towards the front of the grid.”

DeLeon’s impressive 2024 season saw him bring the new single car Un-Limited team into the points on a regular basis in the much-maligned Cupra Leon. Several top 10 finishes, including a seventh on the Brands GP layout, marked him as a driver to watch in Touring Car racing.

DeLeon has been marked as a star of the future for some time, with people who worked with the 19-year-old in the British Endurance Championship praising his skills and predicting great things when he made the mid-season jump into the BTCC at the halfway point of the 2023 season with Team HARD.

DeLeon will be looking for wins in his first campaign in the BMW and also said: “I’m excited to return to a rear-wheel drive car as that’s been my background pre-BTCC and the BMW is clearly a mega machine as it proved by winning the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ Championships in 2024. The first aim will be to score a podium finish and I’ll also be trying to win the Jack Sears Trophy across the season. I think both are realistic targets and I’ll be working hard with the team to raise my performance level to where it needs to be for a team like WSR.”

WSR have also been connected to Colin Turkington returning, with Aiden Moffat and Andrew Watson being linked with the two remaining seats at the Sunbury based team.