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JAS Honda disappointed with BoP weight adjustment for Hungary

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JAS Motorsport have signalled their dissatisfaction at the latest Balance of Performance changes by the TCR organisation, which has created a 20kg swing between their Honda Civic TCRs and two of their rivals, the SEAT León TCR and Volkswagen Golf GTIs.

The Golf and the León have had 10kg of weight taken out ahead of this weekend at the Hungaroring, while 10kg has been added to the Civic, bringing it to a new weight before success ballast of 1,325kg, just 5kg lighter than the championship leading Audi RS 3 LMS of Stefano Comini.

The Civic has enjoyed a run of success in the TCR series in recent weeks, with the Boutsen Ginion Civic of Benjamin Lessennes and Tom Coronel winning all five races at Zolder two weeks ago, while Roberto Colciago won his third race of the season at Salzburg last weekend, even while carrying an additional 30kg of success ballast on top of the BoP weight.

Hondas also won both races at Spielberg in TCR Germany, with reigning champion Josh Files scoring his second and third wins of the season at the Austrian circuit, extending his lead of the championship.

As a result, the TCR technical department has reassessed the Balance of Performance, and given the Civic an additional weight penalty, also increasing the delta to the SEAT and Volkswagen by allowing them to run 10kg lighter.

“We can sort of follow them giving us 10kg as our cars are going quite well…but how come they are changing other manufacturers as well?” said Mads Fischer, JAS Motorsport’s TCR project manager to TouringCarTimes.

“If you look at the lap times at Monza or Salzburg, the first four cars were within a tenth of a second in qualifying, so it’s quite close now – and at Monza, 12 cars were within a second, so I think it’s a good mix.

“I think the people who do the BoP do a great job, but we think this latest change might turn things around too much. Colciago only won (in Salzburg) because he was defended by Tassi. Cars have won before on full ballast, and we are also very lucky, as we have a lot of good drivers like Colciago, Coronel, Tassi, Files and Lessennes in our cars.

“If you look at STCC; we’re not so competitive against some of the other cars, and now our teams will be penalised extra.

“So from my perspective, I think the BoP is working, so it’d be a shame if it went wrong now at an important point in the championship.”