WTCC 2015

It's time for a new season.
While the engines are cooling down after the first practice in Argentina, let's take a quick look at what has changed for the 2015 season.

Starting from the grid, we will find the same Honda drivers as last year, with the addition of Borkovic, moved from Chevy to the Italian Proteam Racing and Rydell, back to the WTCC with team NIKA.
Similar situation for the French Citroen: same official squad plus the fast Bennani who moved from the Proteam Racing owned Civic.
Lada, backed by the new strong Russian sponsor Rosneft, keeps the three drivers from last year but is introducing the new car, much more similar to the Cruze, that replaces the retiring Granta: the Vesta.

Chevrolet supplies four team, including the coming back Craft Bamboo who's placing at the wheel of its Cruze the young Demoustier,involved last year in the Blancpain Endurance Series. Filippi (John) replaces Pepe Oriola in the Campos Racing Team. The Spaniard will join other two departing drivers, Morbidelli and Engstler, in the brand new TCR International Series.

Morbidelli is leaving the seat of his All-Ink Chevy to the other Italian D'Aste who is back after a year away from the Championship. The All-Ink team has also lost the other driver, Munnich, who is still owning the team but is focusing for this year in the Rallycross, and for now that's the last seat available for the WTCC.

Sadly, after nine years, since the FIA World Championship format has been in force, we have to say goodbye to one of the most iconic makers in the history of touring. With the departure of Engstler, in fact, BMW won't take part to the Championship.

Take a quick look at this year calendar and you'll notice that a little revolution took place. The only thing to remain the same is the number of events, twelve, that makes the season run on 24 races. 

That aside, the list of changes is quite long, with some disappointing decisions but also with some very exciting news.

The season is starting this Sunday, a month before the first race of 2014, and it starts in Argentina. But then we'll have two full months of stop between July and September, which is just a little shorter than the period between last season and this one...

Sadly, this year we won't see some of the best tracks like Spa-Francorchamps, Salzburgring and Macau. But at the same time we won't have to stare at that desolated, unsafe and embarrassingly unorganized location of Beijing (see last year's endless attempt to recover the cars of Munnich and Borkovic).

On the other end, the list of tracks entering the calendar in 2015 starts with the brand-new Thai circuit of Chang, which will also host a Superbike event this year, the street circuit of Vila Real in Portugal, that will host the event for the next three years, the well known Circuit of Losail and, last but not the least, the world famous German track also known as Nurburgring-Nordschleife. Yes people, a FIA World Championship event returns to the legendary track so we all sim-racing aficionados can invest some time in trying to beat the lap time of our favorite racers! 

Last change is the venue of the Japanese event, not Suzuka this year but the equally exciting Motegi.

As for us, we can't wait for the season to unfold and we'll be here to report on these 24 raceswith the same passion as usual.

Stay tuned!!