2018 Calendars: FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR)

2018 FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR)

Or unofficially ‘World TCR’, this is the result of a merger, or takeover, between the FIA WTCC and the TCR International Series.

Effectively Eurosport Events, the people behind WTCC, will adopt the TCR rulebook. Factory teams are out, privateers are in, many from the TCR series. The reduction of factory teams means a downgrade from ‘FIA Championship’ status to ‘FIA Cup’, but that shouldn’t matter, most importantly the racing should be excellent.

In terms of calendar housekeeping, I used the WTCC calendar and renamed it.

If you remain subscribed to my TCR International series calendar, I will now be using this for the new TCR Europe continental series. Link on the main Calendar page.

WTCR Google/iCal Calendar links:   ICAL  -or-  HTML

For more championships click here.

*As at 18 February 2018*

2018 WTCR

There is one venue and date left to be confirmed. According to reports in December this could either be in July or October.

The calendar is effectively that of the former WTCC with rounds in Marrakesh, the Nordschleife, Vila Real, Rio Hondo. It also includes Macau which has appeared on WTCC and TCR calendars at different times in the recent past.

The big change to the format is that every race meeting now features 3 races rather than the traditional two of WTCC or TCR International. I like this change, I’ve long thought they shouldn’t go all over the world just to race for 2 x 25 minutes, and the BTCC format of three races per day works really well for touring cars.

A year of transition but it had to be said the WTCC TC1 experiment was a serious waste of time and money. TCR is the way touring cars are going and the future is very promising.