TCR World and life

8 EUROPE Eventually, the Monza weekend only had an impact on the third spot of the championship podium, as Andreas Bäckman could not score a better result than 7th in Race 1 and so lost the position in favour of Santiago Urrutia. The Uruguayan of Team WRT hoped that the top speed of his Audi RS 3 LMS would allow him to take his maiden Touring Car victory, but couldn’t make his dream come true because of the extraordinary form of the Hyundai and Peugeot cars. Still, with a third and a fourth, he was able to secure third position in the final standings, also claiming the unofficial title of best rookie of the year and scoring the points that helped WRT to finish runner-up in the Teams’ standings behind Target Competition. The top five in the Drivers’ standings was rounded off by Nelson Panciatici who impressed in his maiden Touring Car season driving a Hyundai of M-Racing; with two wins under his belt, Daniel Lloyd was the third driver able to achieve more than one win during the season, at the wheel of the Brutal Fish Racing Honda Civic, in a remarkable personal comeback to the international scene of TCR racing. The other race winners were Files’ Target Competition colleagues Andreas Bäckman and Mat’o Homola, plus M1RA Motorsport’s Luca Engstler in the Hyundai camp, Gilles Magnus who scored the only success for Audi and Comtoyou Racing and Alex Morgan with the Wolf–Power Racing CUPRA. TCR Europe confirmed its popular status with both drivers and teams. With a seven- event calendar on iconic racetracks, it offered competitors good value for money, combining top-level close competition with affordable budgets. No wonder then, it was the busiest TCR series in 2019 with an average of 30.7 cars per meeting.