TCR close to full 24 car grid for its first season, says Lotti

TCR International Series CEO Marcello Lotti says his new championship will soon be ready with a full 24 grid for its opening round on March 29th at the Sepang International Circuit, where it will support the second round of the 2015 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

“I can confirm we have 20 cars signed now,” said Lotti to TouringCarTimes. “We have confirmed seven teams, and we working on the decision to chose the last four cars which will fill the grid. We’re not too worried about this as we have a lot of requests and we have only to select the teams.”

Lotti explained in more detail how the new low-cost touring car concept will function, with manufacturer involvement still the order of the day. Unlike other international touring car series however, such as the DTM and the WTCC, where the manufacturers also run their own teams and then support customer programmes as a secondary function, in TCR, the manufacturers will homologate the cars, building the cars themselves or through a recognised partner (such as JAS for Honda and Onyx for Ford), but the teams will run the cars.

“The concept is that it’s the manufacturers that have to build the cars for the customer. What we want to avoid is having one car that’s different from another one with the same brand. This I think would be a nightmare and isn’t aligned with the concept that we believe which will help us establish a second-hand market between the national championships.

“Also I believe the affordability of the car will be better if the manufacturers develop the car for their customers. The customers can also use tuning kits which are authorised by the manufacturers, as that basically is the same as being from the manufacturer, so that is allowed.”

“This concept is to provide opportunities to compete at affordable costs with a car that is built by manufacturers for customers, and to give the drivers experience to compete at an international level so that they can compete and move up to other championships.

“Customers being serviced by manufacturers is a DNA which has existed for a long time in motorsport.”

The TCR International Series will also support three rounds of the Formula 1 Championship, at Sepang, Malaysia in May, Shanghai, China in April, and later in the year at Marina Bay, Singapore in September. Although the V8 Supercars Championship has had a regular spot supporting Formula 1 ever since its inception, no other international touring car series has supported Formula 1 in recent years.

“This is for us is something nice. It’s an idea which I’ve also had in the past, and the opportunity to race three times with Formula 1 I think is great for the experience and the atmosphere we can have around us,” said Lotti.

“We’ll go into the details of our timetable for the Formula 1 events around January, we have a meeting then to discuss and they will communicate to us the timetable for the first two races, and then during the first part of the season we will receive the timetable for Singapore. I’m really open to accept what they decide is best,” he added.

Manufacturers confirmed so far for the TCR Series include SEAT, Volkswagen, Ford and Honda, with teams run by Target Competition (SEAT), Liqui Moly Team Engstler (Volkswagen), WestCoast Racing (Honda) and Paolo Coloni Racing (TBC).