Marcello Lotti: “We will definitely race in Australia”

WSC president Marcello Lotti confirmed that the FIA TCR World Tour will head to Australia after the European leg of the championship, despite the recent issues of TCR Australia which has seen the series reduce its calendar to just two race weekends.

“It’s confirmed that we will race in Australia,” Lotti told TouringCarTimes.

“The problem that we had in Australia is, as you know, at the last minute in 2024 the promoter told us that they would stop doing the championship. The reason it’s difficult to understand and their position was very strange.

“We try to solve it at the last minute, we involved David Sonenscher (TCR Australia promoter since February), he has big knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region but, after, speaking to him he said that it would be very difficult to do something serious.

“So, after speaking to the shareholders, we decided to keep two events only for the TCR Australia this season, so The Bend and Macau, together with us.”

The WSC president is also confident that there will be a sizeable grid at The Bend in two months time.

“We are confident to have 10-12 cars from Australia, so the grid will be around 25 cars,” said Lotti.

“For Macau, we have a grid limit of 30 cars, and we are confident on those numbers. And we are already working on the next season.”

The race in Australia is next up for the FIA TCR World Tour field at The Bend on September 11-13.