The TCR category: Popular base for global touring car racing

TCR stands for “Touring Car Racing.” Since 2015, the category founded by the Italian Marcello Lotti has been evolving into a new base for touring car racing around the globe.

The nineties were the heyday of the Super Touring Cars (STW), which Audi Sport dominated with the Audi A4 quattro for some time, and with which the brand clinched seven championship titles around the world in 1996 alone. The successor category, S2000, was successful for many years as well and provided the basis for the FIA to sanction a World Touring Car Championship (WTCC). Over the years, it increasingly evolved into cost-intensive factory-backed motorsport. As a result, an entry-level category was lacking in touring car racing.

This was precisely what prompted Marcello Lotti to take action. The former WTCC promoter transferred the successful GT3 concept to touring car racing and founded the TC3 (Touring Car 3) from which the new TCR (Touring Car Racing) class emerged in 2015. That this resulted in more than twenty racing series being formed within a very short period of time emphasizes that a worldwide need existed for such a class.

“Our goal was to create a base again for touring car racing,” says Marcello Lotti. “The crucial part about it was to keep the costs for the cars low and to ensure equality of opportunity. We’re achieving this with a balance of performance rule. We’re convinced that more and more manufacturers are going to include the TCR category in their customer racing programs, and that the TCR will provide teams and drivers with an opportunity to get started in touring car racing.”

The new WTCR racing on four continents for the first time in 2018 is the highest-caliber TCR series. Most customers are focused on national or regional series such as the ADAC TCR Germany or the Italian Touring Car Championship in which Audi caused a sensation in the nineties with the Audi A4 quattro and drivers like Dindo Capello and Emanuele Pirro. Endurance races like the Nürburgring 24 Hours permit TCR vehicle entries as well. The TCR models can also compete in classes of individual racing series, for instance in the VLN Endurance Championship Nürburgring, the IMSA in the United States or the 24H Series.