TCR World and life

6 FEATURE The sedan is back as the shape of choice The RS 3 road car comes in both hatchback and sedan form; but the RS 3 LMS TCR is exclusively a sedan car. The second-generation touring car again following the pattern of its predecessor. In fact, when the original RS 3 LMS came out in 2017, it was a pioneer in the TCR market which had predominantly been focussed on the various ‘hot hatches’ produced by the manufacturers at that point. The CUPRA Leon, Honda Civic Type R, and Volkswagen Golf GTI two-box sporty hatchbacks made up the bulk of the TCR market, but Audi Sport came in with its RS 3 LMS sedan – and now four years later many of its rivals have followed suit, with Lynk & Co, MG, and Hyundai all building “three- box” shaped TCR racers. “There are technical reasons we chose the sedan, but we see there is no right or wrong,” explained Milocco. “Both concepts have their advantages. We had great success with the Generation 1 car with a sedan, so we’ve continued with this, and our competition has also followed us and gone the same way.” Built for endurance, and designed for sprint The new Audi RS 3 LMS replaces the Generation 1 RS 3 models, which featured as options either a sequential gearbox or the Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) unit. While the sequential gearbox car has been the preferred choice for touring car sprint racing, the low-running cost of the DSG has made that option the primary choice for taking part in endurance racing. The second-generation Audi RS 3 LMS, like its cousin, the CUPRA Leon Competición, runs with a Hewland six- speed sequential gearbox, which replaces both the DSG and the Sadev sequential units in the range. Audi Sport Customer Racing development team says this gearbox is the ideal choice for both racing formats. “Hewland is a long-term partner of Audi; we have been together in the DTM for more than 15 years,” says Milocco. “We had a target to develop a gearbox for this generation which could cover both endurance and sprint racing, offering our customers a product which is a sequential gearbox and has the low running costs which were appreciated by those who had the DSG version.” Switching to one common gearbox is designed to make it easier for Audi Sport’s customers, which compete in both types of racing. “What happened is teams either had two cars or they swapped the gearboxes using the conversion kit,” explained Schmidt. “With the Generation 2, we focussed on one car which is competitive in all kinds of TCR racing and we’re expecting this will make life easier for the customers.” The previous model is still a winner: Kevin Engman was victorious in TCR Scandinavia at Karlskoga