WSC Asia Limited has unveiled the provisional 2018 calendar for the TCR Asia Series, featuring six championship races in Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and China as well as an end-of-season invitational endurance event.
The fourth season of the regional TCR championship will take in races in conjunction with the TCR Thailand and TCR China national series’ as well as the newly-announced TCR Korea series.
“For 2018 we wanted to focus on consistency and continuing to assist the National Series’ with their emerging markets,” explained WSC Asia Limited’s David Sonenscher.
“The recent news about WTCR [FIA World Touring Car Cup] shows that the concept is working so well that it’s being adopted at the highest level of touring cars globally, and that success is filtering down to the different regional and national championships who have adopted TCR.
“For Asia, there is now the addition in 2018 of TCR Korea – which will join us for the fourth event of the year to give their teams the opportunity to compete against Asia’s best – whilst there is also news that new cars are being sourced from Hyundai, Audi, Volkswagen and Honda for competition throughout the region this year. We’re also fielding regular requests for information from new and established Asian teams, so interest is strong.
“Some of that enquiry centres around endurance racing for which the TCR cars have become popular in Europe, so in addition to the five-event TCR Asia program, we have an established link with the new SIC888 endurance event in Shanghai that will allow TCR Asia teams to get preferential opportunities to follow on from the season finale immediately ahead of the 888-kilometre race.
“That will allow them the opportunity to compete in an event without affecting their TCR championships, and at the same time, attract budget from one of two other drivers to join them in SIC888 the same weekend.
“Titles in 2018 will be on offer to the overall champions in the Drivers and Teams championships, whilst we will again have the TCR Asia Cup for the leading amateur driver plus the new South-East Asia Cup for the leading driver across the three rounds alongside TCR Thailand. We have also developed the TCR Asia Trophy for the DSG cars, of which there are more emerging in Asia, so that will give those teams something to battle for too across the season.
“On the promotional front, we will again have a strong international media package with TCR Asia programs broadcast around the world to an audience of well over 400-million homes, we will have an increased media package in China complete with Chinese commentary, and we will be stepping up our social media activity with extended coverage with of course – ongoing live-streaming of every event.”
2018 TCR Asia Series calendar
Round 1 and 2: 30 March – 1 April – Sepang, Malaysia*
Round 3 and 4: 1 – 3 June – Buriram, Thailand*
Round 5 and 6: 13 – 15 July, Bangsaen, Thailand*
Round 7 and 8: 25 – 26 August – Korea International, South Korea
Round 9 and 10: 4 – 5 October – Shanghai, China
Invitational: 7 October – Shanghai, China [SIC888 – endurance]