Photo: Super TC 2000 Media

20 cars hit with ballast to compensate for “illegal” front-ends

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20 cars taking part in this weekend’s Argentinian Super TC 2000 Championship race at Buenos Aires have been given 30kg of ballast, after having been deemed to have broken the championship’s technical regulations.

20 of the 31 entries were discovered to be running higher than stated in the technical regulations, including the Chevrolet, Fiat and Renault factory teams as well as the independent entries of Escudería Fe, JM Motorsport, Riva Racing and Escudería FELA.

The team at the heart of the protest was PSG16 Team, the operation which run the new Citroën Total Racing squad, which took pole position and won the sprint race on Saturday.

“There are no interpretations possible, the rules are extremely clear,” said team boss Alberto Scarazzini to TouringCarTimes. “Those cars are not legal, and it was alerted since the very first moment back in December. In my opinion, 30kg is a really light punishment. They should have added 100. I wouldn’t like to be beaten by an illegal car, and that’s close to happen in Sunday’s feature race”, he added.

The cars ran without ballast in the first practice session, where Leonel Pernía was the pace-setter in his Renault Fluence, before the teams were told to add the penalty weight.

The reigning champions Chevrolet are one of the teams also hit by the penalty, but maintain that their cars changes were approved well ahead of the race weekend.

“Back in December we had reached an agreement, which was written down in the rules, so we built our cars following that,” said Luciano Monti, Chevrolet’s technical director. “We made some modifications and reviews which were later checked and approved. (Then) a few days ago we were warned the front-ends were not in the rules, of course we had no time to resolve, and we had some enquiries before which were not clearly answered.”

Toyota Gazoo Racing were also set to field two cars with the front-ends which were now deemed in breach of the rules, but have avoided penalisation after fitting newer parts which have passed inspection.