The Adria International Raceway will host the official Balance of Performance [BoP] tests for TCR next week, with Andrera Belicchi and Nicola Larini set to sample ten different makes of car.
As part of the fundamental underpinnings of TCR, an official BoP test is carried out each year in order to ensure that the manufacturers are closely matched on the track.
Last year’s test was held at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, and saw Larini take to the wheel as he did in the inaugural year in 2015. The Italian is returning to carry out the tests again in 2017, where the venue has moved to the Adria circuit in Northern Italy. Track testing will be carried out on the 1 and 2 March.
“We have confirmed Nicola for the third consecutive year, as his vast experience and speed have already proved instrumental in supplying our technicians with all the information they need,” said TCR promoter Marcello Lotti.
“This year we have added another touring car expert in Belicchi, because we have so many cars that it would be an impossible task for only one man to test them all.”
The cars to be tested are the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, Audi RS 3 LMS, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, KIA Cee’d, Opel Astra, Peugeot 308, SEAT León, Subaru WRX STi and Volkswagen Golf GTi.
Two different variants of the Audi, SEAT and Volkswagen cars will be run, due to the models having two types of gearbox, DSG and sequential.
Testing is not restricted to the race track either; the cars will subsequently be transported to Grugliasco, near Turin, where they will be subjected to tests to measure their drag and lift coefficients in the Pininfarina wind tunnel on Friday 3 March.
The results of the three-day test will be revealed by the middle of March and they will dictate the BoP for all the TCR series worldwide.
The week’s activities will also include a Technical Seminar on Tuesday 28 February, where the technical delegates of different regional and national TCR championships will be briefed about the regulations and scrutineering procedures by Andreas Bellu, the Chief of the TCR Technical Bureau, and Umberto Fasolo, the TCR Technical Delegate.