BRC Hyundai team slam new BoP levels ahead of season start

The BRC Racing Team has announced its disappointment with the Balance of Performance levels set by the TCR promoter, WSC Group, ahead of the 2019 World Touring Car Cup season.

Following on from driver Norbert Michelisz’s comments yesterday, the team have said the new BoP levels are unexpected, and will unfairly hamper their i30 N TCR at the start of the season.

The Hyundai i30 N TCR has maintained its 90mm ride height, the maximum in the field, as well as its 97.5% engine power, while gaining 10kg of BoP weight to carry throughout the season, in addition to any compensation weight.

“We are surprised and disappointed about the Balance of Performance (BoP) for 2019,” said team manager Gabriele Rizzo.

“If we consider our performance at the end of last year, even taking in account the compensation weight effect, the Hyundai i30 N TCR was not the fastest model on the field.

“We were expecting a BoP close to the one of last year for the same cars used in 2018. Instead the new BoP unfairly penalises our car while improving the performance of others.

“This takes away our ability to compete at the same level as our competitors.

“We fear the democratisation of TCR races has been enforced to the extreme, preventing the same team with the same car to compete for victory for two consecutive years.

“We have seen the top speed analysis of this morning’s testing and we are astonished that we are 10km/h slower than the fastest model, we are the second heaviest car, we are the highest car in terms of minimum ride height and the lowest car in terms of engine BoP – and now we have been given a BoP that does not match our performance on track.”

The team has been outside of the top ten in every session so far, although many at the test have been critical of the performances, referring to the test as little more than a show.

“What test? Are there other cars here?” said Team Mulsanne Alfa Romeo driver Kevin Ceccon.

“Everyone else is using this as a media event, just to take some photos, but no one but us is actually testing. We are doing it as we need the track time.”

2017 TCR International Series champion Jean-Karl Vernay was equally critical, especially of Hyundai’s claim and their performance.

“We’re only able to do half of the work we want to today, as we can’t go flat out because everyone else is just playing games,” said the WRT Audi driver to TouringCarTimes.

“The Hyundais are running five seconds slower around here than they were in TCR Europe last year, with the same BoP; they’re just playing a joke on everyone.”

2018 champion Gabriele Tarquini still firmly believes the BoP will mean the BRC Racing Team will struggle for results in the first races.

“I’m not very happy with the news regarding the Balance of Performance,” said Tarquini.

“In the last part of the 2018 season the regulations may have balanced our very good performance in the first part of the season, but in reality, we weren’t very competitive with the speed or the performance.

“Because of this, I expected the BoP to be better than what was. It’s not good news for us because it now looks like we don’t have a good chance to fight for pace in the first races. “