Colin Turkington joins British GT4 with WSR and Ernie Graham in new BMW programme

Four-time British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington confirmed a new direction for his racing career in February 2026, joining the British GT Championship's GT4 category with the WSR FlexiFly team. The Northern Ireland driver partnered Ernie Graham in a BMW M4 GT4 Evo for a full-season Pro-Am programme. It was a major change of discipline after a long career identified with touring-car racing, and it reunited him with West Surrey Racing, the organisation closely connected with his BTCC titles.

What the new deal actually involved

British GT4 is not a renamed version of touring cars. Competitors race sports cars built to GT4 rules, and many events require drivers of different grading levels to share one machine. Turkington's partner Graham brought experience in historic rallying but was new to this GT championship environment. The pairing therefore faced a different driving rhythm, pit-stop structure and responsibility for sharing a car. The BMW M4 GT4 Evo was also a different competition machine from the rear-wheel-drive touring cars in which Turkington became a champion.

West Surrey Racing's participation was notable because the team had an exceptionally successful British Touring Car history, including numerous drivers' and manufacturers' titles. Turkington himself accumulated four BTCC crowns and 72 race wins during his touring-car career. Re-entering competition with WSR was therefore not a move to an unknown organisation, but the category switch meant the team and driver needed to develop a fresh programme rather than assume previous titles would translate automatically into GT4 victories.

Why the transition mattered

Turkington did not race a full BTCC season in 2025 after his long run in the series. His 2026 British GT signing provided an answer to what his next major racing programme would look like. It also created a strong Northern Ireland interest in a championship whose leading events include Silverstone, Oulton Park, Brands Hatch and Donington Park. A driver with four touring-car championships was starting again in a discipline where driver changes and endurance tactics can matter as much as qualifying speed.

Graham's presence gave the line-up another layer of interest. He had won at national and historic rally level, so he was not a novice motorsport participant; his learning curve lay in contemporary shared-car circuit racing. Describing him simply as an amateur with no motorsport background would ignore that experience. The Pro-Am classification recognises that the partnership combines drivers with differing professional gradings, and a class result needs to be identified separately from the overall GT4 order.

The first evidence came at Silverstone

The partnership made its racing debut at the 2026 Silverstone 500 in April. Despite a drive-through penalty, Turkington and Graham came away with a Pro-Am class podium, according to the championship organiser. That later result gives the earlier signing meaningful follow-through. The car had completed a long GT race and produced an immediately competitive class classification even while coping with a penalty. It does not mean the team won GT4 outright; the overall class victory went to Innovation Racing's Thomas Holland and Hadley Simpson.