Photo: Oreca Supercopa

ETC Cup to include Supercopa and Clio Cup

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The 2012 FIA European Touring Car Cup will allow two additional classes of car to compete in this year’s season, with a single-make category for Renault Clio Cup and SEAT León Supercopa cars.

The championship has published its amended regulations for this year’s four event season, which will now feature five different trophies.

The first (and fastest) class will be for those competing to Super 2000 Article 263 Appendix J 2010, which are the normally aspirated 2.0 litre petrol and 2.0 litre turbo-diesel cars, which were the dominant class in the World Touring Car Championship until last year. This category was won in 2011 by Fabrizio Giovanardi, driving a Honda Accord Euro-R for Hartmann Racing.

There will again be a cup for cars conforming to FIA Super Production regulations. Last year this was won by Aleksandar Tosić, driving a Honda Civic Type-R for ASK Vitro Racing.

There will also be a cup for cars conforming to ADAC Procar Division 2 regulations. This is a slight change in the regulations as this category was previously for cars officially conforming to FIA Super 1600, but the class is effectively the same. This category has previously been heavily populated by cars which already compete in the German ADAC Procar D2 class. Maurer Motorsport has already confirmed it will enter a pair of Chevrolet Aveo S1600s this season.

There will again be an FIA Touring Car Nations Cup, which was jointly won last year by Italy and Spain thanks to the results of Giovanardi and SUNRED driver Pepe Oriola.

The new class is for Single-Make Series, which will allow cars into the ETC Cup for the first time which race in the various SEAT León Supercopa and Renault Clio Cup categories throughout Europe.

Success ballast has also been reinstated for the ETC Cup now that it’s back to a multi-event series as it was in 2010. Super 2000 class cars will be awarded ballast for the following event based on their points haul in the previous event’s two races. The driver which scores the highest (total of both races points) will carry an additional 20kg, second placed driver 15kg, third 10kg and fourth through sixth an additional 5kg.

In addition to that, each driver will also carry ballast which matches their championship points tally, e.g. 1kg per point, until a maximum of 50kg of ballast is reached.

Super Production and Super 1600 will also have success ballast although to a lower scale.