FIA status and expanded calendar in 2024 for the TCR World Tour
The 2024 TCR World Tour will be known as the Kumho FIA TCR World Tour, with the top tier of international touring car competition becoming a recognised and supported category by the global motorsport authority the FIA after just one season.
The TCR World Tour was launched in 2023 and effectively (though not intentionally) became a replacement for the WTCR — FIA World Touring Car Cup, which had folded at the end of 2022, with the series’ promoter Discovery Sports Events stating it couldn’t find a way to make the series sustainable.
The technical rights holders, WSC Group, stood up with its own series, and working with the promoters of a number of national and regional TCR categories, such as the TCR Europe series, promoted by TCR Euro Series and its director Paulo Ferreira, ACI and the TCR Italy championship, creating a standalone event the TCR Italian Festival at Vallelunga, the TCR South America series with promoter Mauricio Slaviero, the TCR Asia Challenge with promoter David Sonenscher, and the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia series — put together a nine-event calendar racing at some of the world’s top circuits.
It also delivered a tense championship, with Hyundai’s Norbert Michelisz, Lynk & Co’s Yann Ehrlacher, and Audi Sport’s Rob Huff all going to the season finale at Macau separated by a single point, with Michelisz coming out on top.
The quickly-put-together series had far more ups than it had downs, but it was notable that the previously super-strong TCR Europe series suffered a diminished entry, partly blamed as a result of holding most of its season within the framework of the 2023 TCR World Tour. This has been resolved in 2024 with just one round taking place with TCR Europe. In fact, only one round takes place in Europe at all in the new calendar — with the focus on international expansion, with the flyaway rounds proving to be very popular.
With an expanded calendar of events across six continents (you’d struggle to find even the full FIA World Championships matching that), the 2024 Kumho FIA TCR World Tour has a much bigger programme next year, visiting Europe, Africa, North and South America, Oceania, and Asia.
Circuits include returns to the Vallelunga circuit in Italy, the Guia Circuit of Macau, Sydney Motorsport Park and Mount Panorama in New South Wales, Australia, as well as new rounds at the Marrakech street circuit in Morocco, and the Mid-Ohio course in Lexington, USA — competing during the round of the IMSA SportsCar Challenge (with the series splitting away from its IMSA SportsCar Championship category for that weekend).
The series will also visit mainland China for the first time, potentially with the TCR China Touring Car Championship (which is yet to reveal its calendar). The China series boasted a 30+ car entry throughout the course of 2023 with factory programmes from Dongfeng Honda, Hyundai, and Lynk & Co China battling for the title, which eventually went the way of Hyundai and its driver Martin Cao.
The full calendar for the 2024 Kumho FIA TCR World Tour:
- April 19–21 —Autodromo Vallelunga Piero Taruffi, Italy
- May 3–4 — Circuit International Automobile Moulay El Hassan, Morocco
- June 7–8 — Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, United States of America
- July 19–21 — TBC, Brazil
- August 2–4 — Autodromo Víctor Borrat Fabini, Uruguay
- September 20–22 — Zhuzhou International Circuit, China
- November 1–2 — Sydney Motorsport Park, Australia
- November 7–9 — Mount Panorama Circuit, Australia
- November 14–17 — Guia Circuit, Macau
