KUMHO TCR World Tour and TCR Europe together in Portimão
This weekend sees a little piece of TCR history being made as the opening event of TCR Europe hosts the KUMHO TCR World Tour on its maiden appearance at the Autódromo do Algarve near Portimão.
The entry list for the KUMHO TCR World Tour reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Touring Car racing over the last few years, with four Cyan Racing Lynk & Co 03 cars for Thed Björk, Santiago Urrutia, Ma Qing Hua and Yann Ehrlacher, a pair of BRC Hyundai Elantra N cars for Norbert Michelisz and Mikel Azcona, two Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS cars for Frédéric Vervisch and Rob Huff while Néstor Girolami will give the new Honda Civic Type R FL5 on its debut at a global level.
In TCR Europe, following its remarkable clean sweep of all four titles in 2022, Comtoyou Racing have made their intentions to defend those titles clear, with a four-car entry that sees Tom Coronel and Viktor Davidovski joined by John Filippi and Kobe Pauwels in their Audi RS 3 LMS cars. Other Audi cars are run by RC2 Racing Team for brothers Rubén and Felipe Fernández and another two for the British duo of Isaac Smith and Lewis Brown, run by Spain’s Volcano Motorsport. There are three Hyundai Elantra N cars, with Nicola Baldan and Mikael Karlsson with Aggressive Team Italia and one Target Competition car for the returning Dušan Borković. Finally, there will be a single Team Clairet Sport – Burson Auto Parts Racing Peugeot 308 TCR car for Australia’s Ben Bargwanna while Sweden’s MA:GP team will give the Lynk & Co 03 its TCR Europe debut with a car driven by Viktor Andersson.
TCR World Tour full-season entries are not able to score points for TCR Europe, but all drivers entered for the event are eligible to score TCR World Tour points as well as scoring in the TCR World Rankings.
Qualifying and both races will be streamed live on tcr-series.tv.
Picture: TCR Europe
