World Touring Car Championship |
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Official Site: fiawtcr.com
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's World Touring Car Championship page on 19 May 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The FIA World Touring Car Championship was an international touring car championship promoted by Eurosport Events and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It has had several different incarnations, including a single season in 1987 as the World Touring Car Championship and most recently a world championship (WTCC) that has run between 2005 and 2017. Following the 2017 season, an agreement was reached for the FIA WTCC to become FIA WTCR and use the TCR technical regulations.
The first World Touring Car Championship, which was open to Group A Touring Cars, was held in 1987 concurrent to the long-running European Touring Car Championship (ETCC). Additional rounds were held outside Europe at Bathurst and Calder Park Raceway in Australia (Calder used a combined circuit of the road course and the then newly constructed NASCAR speedway), Wellington in New Zealand and Mount Fuji in Japan. The Championship was well-supported by the factory European teams of Ford, BMW and Alfa Romeo (until Alfa withdrew following the European races), but was embroiled in controversy. Unfortunately, the leading BMW Motorsport teams and the Ford Europe backed Eggenberger Motorsport had developed a situation of "you don't protest us, we won't protest you". While this worked well in the European races, when the championship landed in Australia the local teams took exception to the Europeans somewhat liberal interpretation of the Group A rules. Subsequently, the Eggenberger cars were protested against and eventually disqualified from the Bathurst 1000 results.
The championship was provisionally awarded to West German Eggenberger Ford Sierra RS500 drivers Klaus Ludwig and Klaus Niedzwiedz. It was not until March 1988 when their Bathurst disqualification was finalised that results were confirmed and Italian Schnitzer Motorsport driver Roberto Ravaglia in a BMW M3 was declared the champion. The Entrants Championship was won by the Eggenberger Texaco Ford No 7 entry. The WTCC lasted only one year and was a victim of its own success — the FIA (and Bernie Ecclestone) feared it would take money away from Formula One and stopped sanctioning the Championship. A silhouette formula championship (proposed by Ecclestone) was announced by the FIA for 1988 which would have seen specialist racing chassis carrying bodywork resembling production roadcars powered by the about to be outlawed Formula One 1.5 litre turbo regulations, but manufacturers did not support the concept. Only one car, based on an Alfa Romeo 164 with a 3.5 litre V10 engine was built before it was abandoned.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 20 June 2008 | Tourenwagen-Weltmeisterschaft 2008 in Brünn  | Wikinews |
| 14 July 2008 | Tourenwagen-Weltmeisterschaft 2008: Rickard Rydell und Tiago Monteiro gewinnen in Estoril | Wikinews |
| 11 August 2008 | Tourenwagen-Weltmeisterschaft 2008: Im Englischen Brands Hatch konnten Jörg Müller und Alain Menu jeweils einen Lauf gewinnen | Wikinews |
| 11 September 2008 | Tourenwagen-Weltmeisterschaft 2008: Augusto Farfus und Felix Porteiro gewinnen in Oschersleben jeweils ein Rennen | Wikinews |
| 27 September 2008 | Tourenwagen-Weltmeisterschaft 2008: Yvan Muller und James Thompson gewinnen in Imola | Wikinews |
| 26 October 2014 | José María López gana el Campeonato Mundial de Turismos  | Wikinoticias |