Photo: Mediaempire

SBF plans to start new touring car championship

The Swedish Automobile Sports Federation (SBF) has terminated the contract with the STCC organisation and plans to start a new touring car championship.
“This is just sad,” said Bob Huzell, Managing Director of STCC to Expressen.

A meeting yesterday, reported here, resulted in SBF deciding to end the contract with STCC and start a new company together with the majority of racing clubs and track owners in Sweden to run a new championship.

One of the participants was Mike Luff, part-owner of Karlskoga, a track scheduled for the sixth STCC race this year.

“We just could not go on with STCC. We are going to terminate our contract with STCC. There is no chance of reconciliation,” said Luff.

The STCC organisation states that they are going to proceed as planned and run the championship without SBF.

“We have an okay from several important partners and we feel confident in running our own championship outside of SBF. They are certainly going to complicate things for us, but we will manage that,” said Huzell.

Reports to TouringCarTimes suggest that all STCC track owners but Knutstorp were present at the SBF meeting. No official information, other than Karlskoga, has been released on which tracks are interested in joining SBF over STCC.

Background on the troubled situation in Swedish motorsport:

2011 – June: The four major STCC teams Polestar Racing, Flash Engineering, WestCoast Racing and Brovallen design forms TTA, Touring Car Team Association, in order to get the STCC organisation to change regulations from S2000 to Solution-F based silhouette regulations.

2011 – August: TTA breaks away and announces a new championship:
TTA – Racing Elite League. STCC continues with S2000 cars with teams Volkswagen Biogas.se and Chevrolet Motorsport Sweden.

2012 – October: STCC and TTA unifies again, STCC keeps name and organisation while the TTA regulations are introduced in favor of the S2000 regulations.

2013 – March: STCC and SBF negotiations fail over budget issues. SBF plans to start a new championship.