Cupras join TCR World Tour as it heads to TCR Italian Festival

The third event on the TCR World Tour takes a different turn from the first two as rather being attached to an established series like TCR Europe, this weekend’s races in Vallelunga will instead be part of a one-off event called the TCR Italian Festival.

At the time of writing there are 16 cars entered, with the top seven in the standings joined by two of the TCR Europe full-timers, Comtoyou Racing drivers Kobe Pauwels and John Filippi, who won last time out at Spa-Francorchamps, and five newcomers.

BRC Racing expands its line-up to three cars with the addition of the teenaged Marco Butti, who knows Vallelunga well from racing on it in TCR Italy. He also has experience of the team’s Hyundai Elantra N TCR having raced for rival team Target Competition in Italy so far in 2023.

Aggressive Team Italia is another team running Hyundais but it has actually downscaled for this weekend with just a sole car out on track for Auto GP champion, World Touring Car Cup race-winner and 2021 TCR Italy runner-up Kevin Ceccon.

Estonian team ALM Motorsport remains at two cars with its World Tour full-timer Néstor Girolami joined by Mattias Vahtel. Philip Lindberg had been Girolami’s team-mate at Spa, with both in the new Honda Civic Type R FL5 TCR car. Vahtel will also drive the latest generation Civic for his World Tour debut, rather than the older FK8-spec model.

The most significant of the new entries for Vallelunga is SP Compétition duo Aurélien Comte and Silvain Pussier as they will be the first drivers this year to race in the TCR World Tour in Cupra Leon Competicións. The pair usually race together as team-mates in Italy, and Comte is a WTCR race-winner.

Without needing to adopt the regulations of an existing TCR series, the event promoter has been able to choose a format for the third World Tour round and has opted for an identical one to what was used in the first two events, which doubled up as part of the TCR Europe season as it is also the format used in TCR Italy (which this event is not a part of).

There will be a half-hour practice session on Friday evening, another on Saturday morning and then a two-stage qualifying that afternoon. All cars compete in Q1, which lasts for 20 minutes, then the top 12 progress into Q1 which will be 10 minutes long.

Two 14-lap races take place on Sunday, with the first at 11:10 local time (CEST) and the second at 16:00.

The grid will be the smallest so far, as the first two rounds both attracted more than 20 cars. A clash with TCR Australia’s round at Winton Motor Raceway means Ben Bargwanna is absent, and TCR Europe leader Tom Coronel has opted not to attend despite sitting eighth in the World Tour standings.

That means eleven drivers go into this weekend with the possibility of leaving it as points leader, with BRC Racing’s Norbert Michelisz currently at the top with 94 points. Cyan Racing’s Yann Ehrlacher sits three points behind, with team-mate Santiago Urrutia a further 15 points behind in third.