A new dawn for World Touring Cars
THE WORLD TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP is no more – for now at least – after a landmark deal to allow the series to adopt TCR regulations next year was confirmed at last Wednesday’s
FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting.
From 2018, the WTCC will cease as an FIA world championship and instead will become the FIA World Touring Car Cup, running under the WTCR banner to denote its change of technical platform. The two-year span of the new deal – under which regulations will be licensed out by TCR trademark owner WSC – effectively covers the remainder of a planned second three-year cycle of TC1 regulations that, while written with good intentions, threatened the very existence of the championship.
It brings to an end the Super 2000 foundation of touring car racing that had been employed since 2002 – when what became the WTCC was still the European Touring Car Championship – but is not a change that will leave many yearning for an extension of the TC1 era.
The need for a replacement technical framework for TC1, which Eurosport Events chief Francois Ribeiro admits went both “too far” for privateers in cost terms and “not far enough” for the manufacturers it aimed to appeal to, has been apparent since the end of 2016, when Citroen and Lada walked away from the series. Proposals to adopt the shared Dtm/super GT Class 1 concept were met by a lukewarm response from WTCC teams, and a switch to former WTCC boss Marcello Lotti’s revolutionary TCR formula became the only viable route forward.
“To be honest, the decision was a no-brainer,” says Alan Gow, president of the FIA Touring Car Commission. “Lotti had the TCR International Series, and this will take its place. It’s an interim measure. The cars are not at worldchampionship level and that’s why it’s not a world championship. With the TC1 regulations, we were getting less and less manufacturer involvement and it simply couldn’t last.
TC1 was too expensive for privateers and it wasn’t sexy enough for the manufacturers. It was like being half-pregnant.”
Out go works teams from manufacturers – the WTCC was survived by Honda and 2017 title winner Volvo – and in comes an emphasis on Gt3-style customer racing as well as a rules freeze to ensure budgets don’t spiral out of control and the “spirit of TCR”, in Lotti’s words, is respected. The TCR International Series and Wtcc-supporting European Touring Car
Cup have also been canned as a result.
With entry fees up from 2017’s TCR International Series figure of €40,000 to €75,000 per car for a two-car team, in conjunction with the €129,000 cap on car costs that brings the initial investment for a full season to around €200,000 per car. To put that in some context, annual budgets for WTCC privateers cost upwards of £1million
towards the end of the TC1 era.
In other significant changes, teams made up of a minimum of two cars will be permitted for the World Cup and applications for places on a limited 26-car grid open this Friday (December 15), with priority for those slots given to existing WTCC and TCR squads. Weekend formats will also be tweaked, with three races now taking place over 10 events.
“There were moments of fame for privateers, but they are too short compared to the factory teams,” says veteran racer Tom Coronel, the Dutchman who has been part of the ETCC/WTCC fabric since 2001 and has also competed occasionally in TCR. “The manufacturers are getting all the attention. I understand, I’m not complaining at all.
“But now with TCR, it’s like [the WTCC in] 2006, ’07, ’08 – there are more possibilities to shine, to get your moment of fame. I’m not young, but I know what I’m doing and for me it’s a much bigger chance to bring trophies home than I’ve had for the last seven years. I get more excited by the new regulations.”
Alessandro Mariani, whose JAS Motorsport team – which ran Honda’s factory WTCC effort – will not be permitted to run cars in WTCR, but supplies customers as the constructor of Honda’s Civic Type R TCR cars, adds: “It was the right solution for touring cars in this time. Touring cars is like a wave. We have a period of big success, then the costs become too much and then we have to drop to a different car.”
It’s hard to see who loses from this deal: WTCC promoter Eurosport keeps hold of its flagship touring car category; TCR gets its product promoted on a proper international platform; the manufacturers – despite being banned, as far as factory efforts are concerned, from competition – benefit similarly from added exposure; entry budgets come down significantly for drivers and teams.
That’s not even factoring in the potential spectacle on offer, with a genuine opportunity for 20 top-class drivers to go wheel to wheel – so long as the Balance of Performance, which will be calculated by the FIA and TCR, proves an adequate field leveller.
But TCR is unlikely to feature in the FIA’S masterplan for global touring car racing’s future beyond 2020. Class 1, despite initial reservations, is understood to be the favoured option. Until then, there will be plenty in touring cars grateful for an intervention that is far more comprehensive than a simple stopgap.
“TC1 wasn’t sexy enough. It was like being half-pregnant”