This weekend sees the TCR International Series return to the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia – the venue of the first-ever TCR race 18 months ago in March 2015.
Since that time much has changed, with four new marques (five if you count the one-off appearance of the Peugeot 308) joining the fray already.
At that first race in Sepang in March 2015, just 14 cars took the start, of which more than half were SEATs. Fast forward to this weekend, and the grid has expanded to 23 cars, with just eight being SEAT cars.
The growth has been impressive, with successful regional and national championships taking off in Asia, Thailand, Germany, BeNeLux, Italy, Portugal and Russia.
There have been promises of yet more manufacturers too, but it is important to remember that even now it is still relatively early days for the concept.
Opel, who announced their participation in TCR way back in Summer 2015, have yet to deliver fast, finished customer cars to the teams – the car is however nearing the end of its development cycle, and so can be expected to feature much more prominently in 2017.
KIA, with STARD as the technical partner, will also be entering TCR in 2017, although this is another project which requires a patient wait for all of the pieces to fall into place.
And just this week, Audi revealed that they will be joining the TCR grid from the 2017 season with the Audi RS 3 LMS TCR being developed especially for the customers in the various global TCR championships.
Some of the early announcements have taken time to gather momentum, though. Top Run Motorsport announced their build of Subaru cars for the series early on, but 18 months later and the Italian firm are still experiencing troubles with the development of the cars.
There have also been appearances from Romeo Ferrari’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta cars throughout most of the 2016 TCR International Series season. Whilst the small Italian racers have shown promise, they have yet to show real race-winning potential.
Back to this weekend, though, and the signs continue to look positive. Whilst the 23-car grid is no doubt bolstered by the presence of the TCR Asia Series grid, who joined at the last minute due to the cancellation of the Zhejiang round (there are six Asian entries), it is clearly a healthy, and varied grid, for the championship.
With at least one more manufacturer rumoured to have signed off TCR projects at board level, the further development of TCR is guaranteed, with promised cars from Opel, KIA and now Audi due to bring further variation to the global grids in due course.