Japanese S2000 championship to be launched 2012

The Japanese Touring Car Championship is going to be resurrected in 2012. Six races is going to be held the first year, five of them in Japan and one in China as a part of the China Touring Car Championship (CTCC).

The championship is going to be be run according to the FIA S2000 regulations and behind the resurrection of the Japanese championship is “Concorde Management Inc.” with president Masao Mizuno.

The JTCC organisation has announced their intention to extend the co-operation with the CTCC. The two championships are going to do two joint races in their respective championships in 2012.

The plan is later, in 2014, for the both championships to form an Asian Touring Car Championship.

So far there are no official reports on interested manufacturers, but information to TouringCarTimes suggests that representatives from virtually all major Japanese manufacturers have been involved in the planning of the championship – Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota.

Japan had a successful touring car championship in the end of the nineties, called JTCC, but the GT championships took over in popularity and 1998 was the last year for the championship with Masanori Sekiya as champion in a Toyota Chaser.

Stay tuned for further news!