Independents’ trophy prize fund doubled for 2016

The promoter of the World Touring Car Championship has confirmed that the prize fund on offer for the 2016 season to drivers and teams in the independents’ classification will be doubled to 500,000 EUR in 2016, as part of the championship’s commitment to help privateers compete against the manufacturer might of Citroën, Honda, Lada and Volvo.

The independents’ trophy, to date badged as the Yokohama Trophy, offered 240,000 EUR in total to all competitors across the season, with 8,000 EUR won by the highest scoring driver in the classification each weekend, down to 1,000 EUR for the fifth placed driver.

In 2015, independents’ champion Norbert Michelisz pocketed the most from the prize fund with 66,000 EUR. Runner-up Mehdi Bennani won 58,000 EUR, Tom Chilton 40,000 EUR, Hugo Valente 32,000, Stefano D’Aste 13,000, Tom Coronel 18,000, Gregoire Demoustier 7,000, John Filippi 5,000 and one-off racer Tin Sritrai 1,000 EUR.

As previously confirmed, the WTCC will also drop the Testing session for non-European rounds of the championship for 2015 (unofficially referred to as Free Practice 0) in a bid to cut costs.