IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

The WTCR is being axed, but a new tin-top World Cup is on the way

There’s so much hope in motorsport that synthetic fuels will breathe new life into the internal combustion engine that full electrification isn’t the only route to save racing from a dinosaur fate. But it seems the future hasn’t come soon enough for one major series, as the World Touring Car Cup WTCR) has announced that this season will be its last.

Astruggle to match high sustainability targets is the official reason for the falling axe, although a turbulent year featuring race cancellations through tyre failures and ateam walkout from an already diminished grid makes the WTCR’s impending demise more complex.

It’s a loss, especially for the European tin-top scene the series doesn’t visit the UK and Rob Huffis currently the only British driver). Born from the old World Touring Car Championship, which ran from 2005, the series was created in 2018 around less sophisticated and expensive

TCR regulations. It gained support from Audi, Cupra, Honda, Hyundai and Geely's Chinese Lynk&Co brand, which through the Cyan Racing team won a couple of titles with talented young Frenchman Yann Ehrlacher.

This season, though, Cyan didn't help the cause with its melodramatic response to Goodyear tyre failures at the Nürburgring that led to a humiliating last-minute race cancellation. When further problems reared up at Italy's sweltering Vallelunga, Cyan protested by calling its five Lynk&Cos into the pits at the end of the warm-up laps for both races, then pulling the plug on its campaign entirely.

Its rivals felt a compromise on set-up would have been a more reasonable solution, as Hyundai's talented Spaniard Mikel Azcona came of age. Azcona is on course to be crowned the last WTCR king in November as the final races play out in Bahrain and on a shorter version of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix track.

JUST NOT SUSTAINABLE