Photo: WTCC Media

The final rolling start for the WTCC in Macau

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Race one at the Guia Race of Macau today will see the final rolling start for the FIA World Touring Car Championship, with new sporting regulations as well as the new technical regulations come in to force for 2014.

RML’s Yvan Muller and Honda’s Tiago Monteiro will lead the front row for the Championship’s final rolling start, with the Championship switching back to standing starts for both races next year, as was the case up until the 2007 season.

The change was then introduced to help balance out the advantage of rear-wheel drive cars, effectively just the BMWs, on the standing starts, with the rolling starts more favourable if not at least equal for the front-wheel drive cars.

The trend has since been that BMW have more successful in the second race than the first, with many BMW drivers focussing on making sure they have a more favourable grid position for the second race due to this format.

The same will be true today, with ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel starting from pole position for the standing start for race two at Macau after securing tenth place in qualifying, with the top ten reversed for race two.

Next season, with none of the manufacturers entering new specification cars planning to run rear-wheel drive cars, the cars confirmed to date being Honda Civics, Lada Grantas, Citroën C-Elysées and Chevrolet Cruzes, the rear-wheel drive advantage for the standing start becomes a non-issue.

Also changing for 2014 will be the qualifying and warm up format. On Friday, the WTCC had its last two-segment qualifying session, with a three-part format being introduced in 2014, with Q3 now featuring a top five one-lap shootout between the drivers.

The 15 minute morning warm up which takes place later this morning will also be the last for the WTCC, with the two races now becoming the only track activity on the Sunday from next season.