Touring Car Trophy: Same Great Racing, Lower Costs

Top class Touring Car racing remains alive and well in the UK, though for many attempting to break through into the top echelons of National racing, the route can seem far less clear and costs far more steep.

With financial pressures affecting drivers both nationally and internationally, Touring Car racing, while more popular than ever, remains elusive for many drivers hoping to reach those top steps.

As a result, this season sees the birth of the Touring Car Trophy as a way to reduce the cost for those competing in a variety of machines, while also creating an easier bridge to the top of the national scene.

The brainchild of Stewart Lines, TCT will be open to NGTC, TCR and Super 2000 models, with classes split accordingly, throughout the field of 2.0L Turbo Touring Cars.

Lines and his Maximum Motorsport outfit are no strangers to racing, nor series management, with TCT to run alongside their already existing VW Racing Cup for two of its five rounds.

“The Touring Car Trophy will replicate all the ideals and regs of the VW Racing Cup, everything that has worked over the years because we know it’s a formula that works.

Financially we will also keep it sensible. There is a lot of people who want to race a Touring Car but they’ve never had a chance or will never be able to because of the budget.” – Stewart Lines

Costs of the BTCC, as well as the ToCA support package, have long been known and even on the greatest national spectacle, support classes do not exceed 24 runners. This Cost vs Exposure argument has been seen most starkly in the last two years by the MINI Challenge, which continues to boast grids of 30, even as support to the British GT Championship. Whether the MINI’s can maintain this level of representation when it replaces Clio’s in 2020 is yet to be seen.

Speaking to Motorsport Radio at the Autosport Show, Lines was confident for the new season, explaining a full campaign would be around £50,000 a year for start-up teams.

Lines of course was a familiar of the paddock, having been a raced in the series from 2015 to 2017. Understanding the leap that many rookies struggle with, he sees TCT as an opportunity for younger drivers to gain experience in the more powerful machinery before making the final hurdle.

The series, which will also run on Dunlop tyres, has already attracted top-level support, with Team Dynamics and HMS committing to run at least one car in concordance with their BTCC campaigns. Dynamics especially have already announced Henry Neal, son of Matt, with three more drivers already on the books.

So far it has proven popular with teams, with at least nine outfits expected to take part. Maximum, of course, already have experience with Balance of Performance, not just from the VW Cup but also in Britcar. The same Power Testing Facility as used in VW’s should limit the cars to 350hp, though Lines remains confident that much weight distribution will not be essential.

“We run cars in Britcar and we’ve run our SEAT Leon and VW Golf alongside BTCC Toyota’s, Touring Cars, and our lap times are virtually identical. They were within tenths.

So our BoP, will be a bit of weight here and there if someone’s running away with it. But our rules are [that] we run success ballast in the cars that are winning, so with the VW’s it’s impossible to win every race as you get dragged back into the pack. If you win, you have to put 75kg in.

We don’t want people running off, we want it as fair as we can.”

Lines praised Alan Gow for his stance towards BoP, saying he’d like to “mirror” much of what the BTCC has achieved.

Similarly to the recently set up TCR UK Championship, TCT will almost certainly spend 2019 as its learning year, in preparation for a full-time move onto the GT Support package for which the series has first refusal.

The first round takes place at Donington Park on the 13-14th April as support to the GT Cup and fellow MSVR series.

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