FIA to focus on TC Lite to bring young drivers into touring cars

The FIA will focus on TC Lite and the TCL4/TCL5 regulations as stepping stones into touring car racing for young drivers, whilst retaining the partnership with TCR rights holder WSC Ltd to keep TCR at the top of the touring car pyramid.

“That’s something that we will continue to do,” FIA Circuit Sport Deputy Director Stuart Murray said to TouringCarTimes.

“What we’re focussing on separately ourselves is actually the junior levels because what we see is that even if we look at most of our drivers, it’s probably an ageing demographic. We have a lot of guys that go into touring cars and what we need to do is to bring more young people into touring cars.”

The TCL4 and TCL5 regulations were announced a year ago and are based around the Rally4 and Rally5 regulations.

“What we’re doing with that is we’ve developed the new regulations for touring car light which is kind of two levels,” said Murray.

“There’s Touring Car Lite Four (TCL4), Touring Car Lite Five (TCL5) and basically what we’ve got is adopted, or adapted is a better way to put it, the rally pyramid. So in the rally pyramid you have Rally 1 being the WRC cars, Rally Two which is probably the equivalent of a TCR car.

“A lot of them, I think the Hyundais, they share similar components between their rally two cars and their TCR cars. Then at the lower level you have the rally four and rally five which are two-wheel drive, low cost comparatively.”

There are so far no completed TCL4 or TCL5 cars and no announced prices, but Rally4 and Rally5 cars are priced at around 50-80 000 euros.

“No motorsport is cheap but these are much lower cost cars and we looked at it for a number of years and thought this is what the FIA is missing: an entry-level touring car class,” said Murray.

“And we realised after a while that we already have the perfect cars available, and they are the rally cars because they share common components and there’s already established customer racing platforms in place. And at that lower level it’s not so much about having ultimate performance, it should be about track time, it’s about value for money.

“So what we’ve done is adapted the rally four and rally five regulations for TCL 4 and TCL 5 which is free for any national or regional organiser or ASN to adopt and we’re not reliant on convincing manufacturers to take this project on and start from scratch because we’re able to already utilise the hundreds and hundreds of cars which have already been manufactured and used for Rally 4 and Rally 5.”

Cars currently featuring in Rally4 and Rally5 include the Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 208, Renault Clio, Skoda Fabia and Lancia Ypsilon.

“Essentially, all you have to do to convert your Rally 4 car to a TCL 4 is you take out the co-driver seat, the rally clocks, the spare wheel and the tools and which is all you could do that in 20 minutes with a mechanic and then the only other real technical job is to change the gear ratios just to set it up more for racing,” said Murray.

“It potentially allows is for someone to invest in one of these cars, use it for a rally one weekend, use it for a circuit race the following weekend, then the next weekend they could use it for hill climb or potentially even rally cross in the future. It provides better value for money for those that want to invest in the cars, it gives more opportunities for teams who want to find.”

The lower part of this touring car pyramid is to be aimed at young drivers seeking their first steps into touring car racing, a more affordable option than single seaters.

“Hopefully it gives us a lower cost alternative for those that maybe don’t want to go Formula 4 racing or go into GTs, we can keep them in touring cars and we can give them a cost effect,” Murray added.

“It would be the perfect step out of karting, because what you would find is that maybe some people they come into karting and maybe they’re not, Formula 1 isn’t their goal but maybe some might consider going rallying or circuit racing.

“This is a car which they could invest in for relatively low cost and it would give them the option to try both and there’s nothing that stops them from having a career in both but it’s a low enough cost car that it can be driven by 16-17 year olds.

“It’s not a problem, it’s not going to scare them but at the same time it’s going to be a proper race car built by a manufacturer and it’s the ideal first step on the pyramid.”

The FIA is discussing the concept with various ASNs and TCL4/TCL5 competition could see the light of day in 2026.

”We launched the project ultimately a number of years ago but with COVID and other things that was something that didn’t really take off at the time so we restructured it and went in a different direction to really focus on the existing Rally 4 and Rally 5 cars,” said Murray.

“So we have ongoing discussions with organisers and ASNs throughout Europe in multiple different countries. So we’re making good progress and we hope to have competitions for this level of car from 2026 onwards. It just takes time to obviously have all the paperwork and the homologations complete.”

The FIA will focus on national junior championships while the world, regional and national senior touring car championships will continued to be maintained by WSC via the TCR regulations.

“The first role of the FIA is not necessarily to look just at what happens internationally, it’s to support our national organisations and national federations, the better job we can do to support our federations at the lower level the more we will benefit once people get up to the top,” Murray said.

“We have to try and do is help create the pathways to go up the levels, like launching this year for the first time with in partnership with WSC the TCR World Ranking Final.”