Silly season round-up for the 2015 WTCC

With the 2015 FIA World Touring Car Championship, its 11th season, just over three months away, we take a quick look out how the grid is shaping up for the new season, which will feature just the latest TC1 class cars after a successful implementation of the new regulations this year.

With three manufacturers on the grid, the majority of the field is already in place (or at least a worst kept secret). While the remaining privateer teams which will contest the Yokohama Trophy next season wait for their drivers to arrange their budgets for next season before announcements are made.

Unusually, at this time last year, we even knew the majority of the independent entries for this season, as budgets needed to be found ahead of time in order to place deposits for the new RML-built Chevrolet Cruze TC1, but now with just upgrade packages to those cars required, there’s a little more leeway this year, with the first round of the championship set to start in South America in early March. With the season’s start switching away from Europe, the cars will be airfreighted at the end of February, allowing even more time to test and for privateers to finalise budgets for next season.

Citroën Total WTCC

The Citroën works team, which in every sense of the world dominated at least the early part of the 2014 season, already confirmed their line-up for 2015 during the Macau weekend. Yvan Muller and Sébastien Loeb were already in multi-year deals anyway, and there was no real doubt the team would retain their championship winning driver José María López for 2015. So the drivers remain the same, just the numbers on the doors will change.

The team will also build newly upgraded C-Elysée WTCCs for next season, with the old cars going to…

Sébastien Loeb Racing

New for 2015, Sébastien Loeb Racing will join the grid as Citroën’s B-team. The team’s entry was also announced at the Macau weekend, with the factory Citroën team stating it hopes that occasional fourth driver Ma Qing Hua will be able to continue on to a second year in the championship with “SLR”, but nothing’s confirmed as yet.

That said, it also appears that Moroccan driver Mehdi Bennani is set for a change of scenery, and after one successful year with the Honda Civic, with the Italian Proteam Racing outfit for which he has driven since 2011, the WTCC’s latest new race winner is believed to be heading to join Loeb’s team next year.

So a Ma & Bennani line-up seems likely, though there has also been speculation, released by Radio Le Mans earlier in the week, that former Formula 1 driver and current FIA World Rally Championship driver Robert Kubica could be set for double campaign with SLR in both WRC and WTCC in 2015.

With plenty of clashes expected between the WTCC and WRC calendars, it’s unlikely that a full season in WTCC will be possible, so perhaps the Pole will end up rotating the second SLR seat with Ma. However, a Kubica joint-WRC/WTCC campaign was Citroën’s original plan for 2014 as it was and it didn’t work out then, so this could well not happen again.

Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team

The Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team is yet to announce its driver line-up for 2015, but with both drivers Gabriele Tarquini and Tiago Monteiro currently at the Aragon circuit testing a raft of developments for the 2015 Honda Civic, it’s certainly going to be a surprise if the two aren’t reunited at the same team for an eighth season together.

There has been speculation linking Hungary’s Norbert Michelisz to a seat however if you were making an outside bet. Although Monteiro had all the form in the early part of the season, but some bad luck later in the season, a consistent year for Michelisz saw him finish as the “best of the rest” behind Citroën and the best of the Hondas, despite not winning a race in a year for the first time since 2011. However, expectations are very much that he will remain with…

Zengo Motorsport

The small Hungarian squad punched well above their weight in 2014, with Norbert Michelisz the driver to threaten the Citroëns the most of anyone during the first non-reversed grid races all season, even though victory eventually eluded him. Should Michelisz however be snapped up by the factory Honda team, there are a number of talented Hungarians who could take his place, though admittedly without the profile of Hungary’s biggest motorsport star.

Proteam Racing

The small Italian team which was the top independent squad during the first years of the WTCC experienced a return to form in 2014, taking their first overall win with Mehdi Bennani in 2014 at Shanghai, after having missed out at least twice before, with Stefano D’Aste almost (or rather, briefly) winning a race at Spa in 2005, and with Javier Villa leading his home race at Valencia in 2011 before he was pushed out of the way by Tom Coronel.

Despite a great season, trouble looms however, with Morocco-backed Bennani believed to be on his way to Sébastien Loeb Racing, which will mean a tough search for a driver with the kind of budget that can support a season in the TC1 Honda Civic. Whether the Civic is an appealing enough package to lure away one of the privateer drivers from their Chevrolet Cruzes could also be a factor.

NIKA Racing

Also due back on the grid in 2015 is NIKA Racing with a new Honda Civic TC1 for former WTCC racer and STCC & BTCC champion Rickard Rydell. The Swedish team, which was on course to finish second overall in the 2013 drivers’ standings behind Yvan Muller until driver Michel Nykjaer’s budget ran out made one appearance in 2014, running the last operational TC2-class Honda Civic at Hungary for Yuke Taniguchi before the engine blew. The team plan to field a Civic for Rydell, who will racing for his first full season in the WTCC since 2009.

ROAL Motorsport

The top of the Chevrolet RML teams in 2014 was ROAL Motorsport, the former BMW factory squad run by Aldo Preo and 1987 World Touring Car champion Roberto Ravaglia. The two Toms were an effective pairing in 2014, and both Chilton and Coronel hope to remain with the team running upgraded Cruze TC1s and with a much needed test programme, with ROAL the team which competed the least in season testing of anyone last year.

Campos Racing

Campos Racing spent most of each weekend fixing their cars, but certainly in the early part of the season surprised many with drivers Dusan Borkovic and Hugo Valente seemingly the fastest of all the Cruze-equipped runners in the first few rounds. Borkovic’s season ended on a high with the first podium for a Serbian driver in an FIA World Championship at Suzuka, before sitting out Macau due to injury, with Hugo Valente scoring his third podium of the year. Both are working on staying in the championship next season, with Valente targeting a factory drive in 2016.

Münnich Motorsport

Münnich Motorsport were a last minute addition to the grid in 2014, and perhaps will follow the same pattern and leave working their 2015 programme out to the last minute. The German squad, which originally planned to run just one SEAT León for team principal René Münnich for 2014, suddenly decided to snap up the last two new Chevrolet Cruzes for this season and add Italian touring car star Gianni Morbidelli in the second seat. Heading into the off season, the team is believed to be planning just the one Cruze for Münnich again, with Morbidelli set to be left out after a strong return to the championship.

However, already there are rumours that the GT1 World Championship winning squad could run a proven race winner in their second car for 2015 after all, with British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington and three-time WTCC champion Andy Priaulx both linked with the drive.

Lada Sport

The factory Lada team driver line-up is already known, with no changes from the 2014 line-up with Russian Mikhail Kozlovskiy, and British pair James Thompson and Rob Huff remaining with the team which is targeting a major step forward for 2015. The team’s title sponsor changes from Lukoil to the state-owned Rosneft oil company. The team ditch their three undersized but overweight Grantas for the more appropriately sized new Vesta, with additional development from ORECA, which have already won a WTCC title running Yvan Muller’s SEAT in 2008.

Volvo Polestar Racing

Though there’s still no official announcement as yet, there’s strong speculation that Volvo Polestar Racing will appear on the grid in the latter part of 2015 in preparation for a full programme in 2016, with a development of their 2011-built WTCC engine fitted to a TC1 car, which would be based on the Volvo V40 hatchback or S60 saloon. No word on the driver line-up either, but with Robert Dahlgren under contract and having already worked on the development of the Volvo C30 World Touring Car back in ’11, it’d be a surprise if he’s not involved.