WTCC goes south to Portugal this weekend
10 Jul 2015

The FIA World Touring Car Championship heads to Portugal’s Vila Real at the weekend, for the next rounds in the exciting motorsport competition which has YOKOHAMA as official tyre supplier.

The Citroen Racing team hopes to continue its dominance of the Championship and current leader Lopez will need to contend with more than his usual tough competitors and French team mates, Muller and Loeb to keep them at bay.  In Portugal, local hero Tiago Monteiro, Honda racing,  will also add to the heat as he is hoping to deliver his best performance  at home.  Monteiro has played down any bad feeling against Lopez following their clash during the Race of France at the Paul Ricard circuit last month, which resulted in his retirement during the second race. “We have our own objectives and we will fight for them here,” said Monteiro. “Incidents happen and that’s what happened in Paul Ricard. Vila Real is another race.” He told reporters.

Sparks, full throttle, heat and a measure of surprise could await in the sun baked track, which had the legendary Sir Stirling Moss win there in 1960s. The scene is set, the teams are ready and racing starts only hours from now.

Meanwhile, a little distant from the World Championship, the Touring car drivers competing in the FIA European Touring Car Championship which also boasts YOKOHAMA as exclusive Tyre supplier, are having a breather following the first half of the season.

In May, at Hungaroring, teenage home hero Ferenc Ficza and Serbia’s Dušan Borković shared the overall wins in their SEAT cars.

In June, as was the case at the opening round of the FIA European Touring Car Cup, the two overall race winners in Slovakia both drove Single Make Trophy-specification SEAT León Cup Racers to jointly lead the SMT classification. Czech Petr Fulin took command of the opening race, while Serbia’s Dušan Borković won race two. There were intense battles throughout all the classes, with Davit Kajaia and Michal Matejovský each claiming a double victory in TC2T and TC2 respectively, while Ulrike Krafft and Niklas Mackschin both triumphed in Super 1600.

More recently, in July, at the last race held at Paul Ricard in France, Champ Peter Rikli’s bid to win the TC2 section of the FIA European Touring Car Cup remained on track managing a win and a second place to head into the summer break 10 points ahead of Michal Matějovský from the Czech Republic.  For his part Andreas Pfister, from Germany, who began to impress at Slovakia continued his catch up to start a serious contention with an impressive victory in France.

The FIA ETCC Championship continues  on 5 & 6^th September.