TCR World and life

12 ETCR A mericans were shocked… to say the least! The sight of Augusto Farfus’ Hyundai Veloster N ETCR, whistling at high-speed on the iconic banking of the Daytona International Speedway left the whole paddock of the Rolex 24-hour open-mouthed. The Veloster completed three laps of the 3.6-mile road track before the start of the season opener of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, in a demonstration aimed to promote the ETCR concept in the region that was set up by IMSA and WSC with the cooperation of Hyundai Motorsport. “It was a unique experience to drive the Veloster N ETCR on this track that is one of the most iconic on the planet. The car was really fast on the oval, although it has not been designed for racing on the banking. But we have proved that an ETCR car can also perform well on a track like this,” said Farfus. Marcello Lotti commented: “Watching the Hyundai Veloster N ETCR running at high-speed on the oval gave me the shivers. The car was impressively fast and ran without any issues. It wasn’t easy to organise this event with all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. But it was definitely worth it, because our goal was to show our product and these few laps have already stirred a lot of interest here in the paddock.” IMSA president John Doonan was delighted: “We’re honoured to be WSC’s exclusive partner in the US to put TCR and ETCR on the racetrack. We’ll continue to work with Marcello Lotti and his team on the time that we can bring ETCR hopefully to the IMSA portfolio sooner rather than later, because we want to be the platform that makes the most sense for our manufacturer partners. The work that Marcello and his team have done to get this to become reality is Step 1. Now it’s our responsibility to work with our manufacturers to see what they would like to do to leverage the opportunity.” Farfus andtheHyundai ETCR shockDaytona