A 24-car field for TCR Europe’s opener at Le Castellet

An impressive twenty-four-car field will take part in the opening event of the 2020 TCR Europe series this weekend at Le Castellet’s Paul Ricard circuit.
When the pit lane exit light turns green at 9am on Friday, it will signal the end of a three-month delay to the start of the season. The championship, which should have started in Spa at the end of May, will instead get underway this weekend and consists of six events instead of the planned seven. Nevertheless, there is relief among the drivers and teams that the enforced delay is finally at an end, and they can contest what promises to be another thrilling season.
Among the drivers returning to the series is last year’s runner-up Julien Briché, who will have a point to prove after narrowly losing out to Josh Files at the final round in Monza back in October. In all, the JSB Compétition team will be running three Peugeot 308 cars, with Jean-Laurent Navarro and Julien’s son Florian alongside the vice-champion. Four additional Peugeots will be entered by Team Clairet Sport for brothers Jimmy and Teddy Clairet, Stéphane Ventaja and Gilles Colombani. 
The 2019 Teams’ champions, Target Competition, will be running three Hyundai i30 N cars for Swedish siblings Andreas and Jessica Bäckman and John Filippi, while there’ll be three Honda Civic Type-R cars for the Brutal Fish Racing Team entry of Martin Ryba, Daniel Lloyd and Pepe Oriola. BRC Racing will have a strong two-car team of 2019 front-runners Dániel Nagy and Mat’o Homola in a pair of Hyundai cars; also returning for 2020 will be Viktor Davidovski in the PSS Racing Honda Civic and Tom Coronel, who plans to enter selected events in another Honda, run by Boutsen Ginion Racing. 
In terms of drivers who are new to the championship, there are a trio of Audi RS 3 LMS cars for Comtoyou Racing, to be driven by Nicolas Baert, Mehdi Bennani and Sami Taoufik (although the latter contested the 2019 season finale at Monza), while the brother and sister pairing of Mike and Michelle Halder will be driving the Honda Civic Type R cars they’d previously used in TCR Germany. Finally, current TCR UK leader Lewis Kent and Russia’s Evgenii Leonov will enter on a race-by-race basis, underlining the series’ international appeal.
Both races will be streamed live on the TCR websites and social media channels.

Download the entry list

Picture: TCR Europe