The 2018 TCR racing season gets underway tomorrow with the Qualifying sessions of the 24H Dubai, the opening round of both the 24H Series and the 24H Touring Car Endurance Series.
15 teams have entered TCR cars: 6 Audi RS3 LMS, 5 SEAT León, 2 Peugeot 308, 1 Honda Civic and 1 Volkswagen Golf GTI.
The reigning champion, Team Altran Peugeot, runs two 308 1.6-litre cars still in the Racing Cup configuration; the Frenchmen Guillaume Roman and Olivier Baron will share the first one with the Danish pairing of Michael Carlsen and Kim Holmgaard; the second car will be driven by Lionel Amrouche, Cyril Calmon (both from France), Henrik Sørensen (from Denmark) and the Iranian Aram Martroussian.
The RKC/TGM Motorsport gives its baptism of fire to the new Honda Civic Type R; four Britons – former BTCC star James Kaye, Ricky Coomber, Thomas Gannon and David Drinkwater – share driving duties with Umair Kahn from Pakistan.
The Liqui Moly Team Engstler’s Volkswagen Golf is in the hands of a competitive quartet formed by the TCR International Series champion Jean-Karl Vernay, the winner of the VLN TCR Class Benjamin Leuchter and TCR Germany front-runners Florian Thoma and Luca Engstler.
The Audi patrol is led by the experienced Bas Koeten Racing and Bonk Motorsport, but also includes the Emirates-based Lap57 Motorsports with three local drivers (team principal Mohammed Al Owais, Abdullah Al Hammadi and Nadir Zuhour).
Dubai’s Atech-DXB outfit runs one SEAT car, just like Hong Kong’s Modena Motorsport, Finland’s LMS Racing and Netherlands’ Red-Camel-Jordans.
The 24H race will start on Friday at 14:00 local time. Live streaming and timing are available at https://www.24hseries.com/2018/24h-dubai-2018/live.
