WSR boss Dick Bennetts believes his team is ready to challenge for the 2012 BTCC title

Onslow-Cole will join Rob Collard and Nick Foster in the expanded outfit, which will use new turbocharged BMW engines in its trio of 320i entries. Neil Brown Engineering, which has developed the successful Honda Civic turbo unit, will prepare the engines.

Although WSR has not won a BTCC round since Colin Turkington took the title with the team in 2009, Bennetts believes the changes, which include backing from title sponsor eBay Motors, will help the team fight at the front.

"Tom was 19 when he started with us in 2007 and he did a good job then," he said. "He's got more experience now and he'll lift the game with Rob - they'll push each other on.

"The target is always to go for the championship."

Bennetts confirmed the cars are undergoing major changes in readiness for the new engines.

"If we'd stuck with normally aspirated we wouldn't have got one driver," he added. "We spoke to several engine builders but Neil had good experience with the Honda last year so we went with him.

"It's a big change: we're sorting a new gearbox, new drivetrain, new diff - lots of things - to cope with the extra torque of the turbo.

"Running Colin [Turkington] at Shanghai in World Touring Cars last year with the turbo engine gave us the final confidence we needed to make the change because we were quick."