TCR World and life

7 WSC president Marcello Lotti is delighted to see the ETCR cars running and ready to race at the end of the launch and technical development phase of this new category for electric touring cars. “I’m relieved that we’ve made it to this stage, because COVID-19 resulted in a delay of one full year in the development,” said Lotti. “ All the three brands that committed to the first racing season are running their cars successfully and are working with professionalism to complete the technical development. We are quite pleased, because we have validated all the software that is needed to make these cars run with no issues. The cars would be ready to race right now, but we are not in a hurry and we want to make the most out of this final stage of the development.” Lotti also stresses that ETCR will remain a cost-effective class in terms of buying and running the cars. “ We haven’t forgot the concept that made TCR so successful and when we began working on ETCR we wanted to give it the same DNA of a really affordable touring car. Which is why we decided to build it around a common electric kit that includes the battery, powertrain, control units and software. This enables the manufacturers to focus on building the chassis and the bodywork in which to fit the ETCR kit and also to gain experience in the management of high- performance electric vehicles. Today the cost of an ETCR car is higher than that of a TCR, while the running costs are not that much more expensive. Obviously, this will change as far as the manufacturers will start building more cars to sell to the customer teams.” Marcello Lotti: ETCR is a reallycost-effective category