Ashley Sutton tasked with testing the C-ECU at Spa

Ashley Sutton’s last-minute entry for this weekend’s TCR Europe series event in Belgium has become clear, with the British Touring Car champion running the new C-ECU on the WRT Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, trialling out the new-for-2019 unit after the latest Balance of Performance adjustments.

The C-ECU, which is a standardised ECU due for general use from 2020, was introduced on the four Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagens for the first two rounds of the World Touring Car Cup, but due to technical issues, the team requested to switch back to the original ECU from the third round of the season at the Slovakiaring, where their results became markedly better.

The new ECU was originally given a non-favourable handicap against the original ECU Golf under the BoP, and made to run 10kg heavier at Morocco.

At the Hungaroring, the weight difference was equalised by the TCR technical committee, while this week’s new BoP measures have seen cars running the new ECU dropped a further 30kg.

That said, with the C-ECU car not having run in the TCR Europe series so far this year, Sutton’s car will carry full compensation weight this weekend of 60kg, which will neutralise the effect.

With Sutton also being a late entry, the Briton will carry an additional 20kg of ballast aboard his WRT car, meaning his team-mate Maxime Potty’s car will be significantly lighter, as well as the two WestCoast Racing Volkswagens of Gianni Morbidelli and Olli Kangas. This means the weekend will be more of an R&D exercise for Sutton, WRT and Volkswagen.