The WTCC is dead, long live the WTCC!

It might sound strange, but I think the financial “collapse” of the world is going to be the salvation for motorsport and especially Formula One and Touring Cars.

Ever since the S2000 rules were introduced, fights over the rules have been many in the World Touring Car Championship.

Elderly men in suits with the manufacturer behind them, briefcases loaded with threats to pull out, have completely crushed all sporting values over who or what brand deserves to cross the finish line first in a WTCC race.

Weights, dispensations, turbo pressures, flat floors, H gearboxes, sequential gearboxes and more have been used as political tools to hit each other with. Everything to win one or two races and use doping to get a better result as equalization, because “the others” got to win the last race.

There is always one manufacturer that is pleased and another that wants to retire, eagerly cheered on by the FIA Touring Car Bureau that in the best interest of the sport equalizes it all between the competing drivers, cars and teams.

Let me make an example: During the Swedish Touring Car Championship premiere I was taken after the race for a doping control. A lady escorted me everywhere to make sure I was not able to cheat and get a bag of urine to be able to conceal that I swallowed some pills to make myself alert for an hour, the very hour that I am racing.

It was very well done and it is good that they hunt cheaters that want better results than what they deserve. We can all agree that drug tests are good.

Then, lets rewind the clock an hour when we, doping checked, drivers were fighting each other on the track in… well, yes, what?

We were fighting a doped bio ethanol powered, three doored, too small, 25 kilos lighter, dispensated Volvo C30 and a bio gas powered, three doored, diffuser equipped, turbo charged Volkswagen Scirocco with extra weight to not produce “too” good results since the organisation does not know how good it should be allowed to be.

And this continues in all championships in Europe with car after car, weights, fuel, turbo and so on.

I just wonder what the color of the pill should be that the doping police could find that beats turbo or 100 kilos of penalty weight.

It all almost felt like irony, a practical joke or ”Candid Camera” when I stood there and peed into the cup under surveillance!

But how is this all going to end? I look in to my crystal ball and dream that all car manufacturers that are in crisis pull out of Formula One and WTCC, resulting in the end of their power to control the results and costs.

You do not need Einstein, but normal people with moral and sporting justice, to list the real and important values of the sport:

1 – Sporting values
2 – Give the spectators what they want to see to flock at the circuits
3 – A well thought through set of rules, man has gone to the moon and is able to determine how the dinosaurs lived million years ago, it cannot be impossible!
4 – All national championship are forced to go by the same set of rules to get one champion

I hope that I soon will be able to say: The WTCC is dead, long live the WTCC!

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Who is Jan Nilsson?
Jan Nilsson, better known as Janne “Flash” Nilsson, is team owner of Flash Engineering and competes in the Swedish Touring Car Championship. Flash was born on the 15th of december 1960 and lives in Karlstad, Sweden. In 1989 he won the Swedish Formula 3 championship, but soon switched to Touring Cars. In 1996 and 1997 Flash won the Swedish Touring Car Championship. He is the most victorious STCC driver with 30 victories.