Photo: WTCC Media

All cars given the same weight allocation

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All 25 cars have been prescribed the same base weight of 1,150kg for the 2013 World Touring Car Championship season.

With the FIA formalising the homologation of the Lada Granta Sport last week, it’s now officially confirmed that all cars base weight will be a minimum weight of 1,150kg, with compensation ballast applied against this on a rolling two race basis.

Prior to 2012, all front-wheel drive cars were assigned 1,150kg and the rear-wheel drive cars (effectively just BMW) were set at 1,170kg, carrying the additional 20kg as a performance balancing measure.

In 2012, with the age and competitiveness of the BMW being taken into consideration, the German cars’ base weight was reduced to 1,160kg, whilst the Championship winning Chevrolet was given a 10kg increase to also bring it to 1,160kg.

Additionally, in a new ruling last year, all of the Chevrolets were forced to start the season on the maximum compensation weight of 40kg, which saw them competing from the first race at a weight of 1,200kg. Due to their success throughout the season, they never dropped below that for the remainder of the year.

The Championship winning car will still be forced to carry 40kg extra at the first round, so the five Chevrolet Cruzes of Yvan Muller, Tom Chilton, Michel Nykjaer, James Nash and Alex MacDowall will run at 1,200kg at Monza and Marrakech.

SEAT, Honda and Lada will run their cars at 1,150kg this weekend, and it will be two rounds until the performance based compensation ballast comes into effect which will add 40kg to the fastest make(s) of car in the Championship and remove up to 20kg from the slowest.

An ongoing concern has been the limitation of these ballasts for the BMW teams. Last year it’s generally believed that no BMW was able to run at anything under 1,160kg, even when they were permitted to run at a lower weight.

The BMW teams have all said that they have been working to reduce the base weight of the car in order to take advantage of the new reduced weight limit and any negative compensation ballast that they could be allocated during the season.