Quote:
Originally Posted by gravin
This is an interesting point - makes for a good club car, especially superseeded models which are quite cheap in reality.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mixer
Except that they are really not, you have a single source of parts, they don't crash well at all, and relatively few are useful for any kind of endurance race.
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If TCRs are so terrible for club racing entrants, why does this
750 MC club race feature no less than six TCRs including both VWs and SEATs? Entrants are free to enter
any kind of car they want -- including one they build themselves, the vast majority of which are also built out of road cars too.
I believe the Audi TT is an ex-VLN car, so it's also very similar to a TCR. (Or it might be a UK car running the VLN aero package. Recall the Audi TT was allowed to be an early TCR, before the rules changed to five doors only.)
Why on Earth would an entrant use a TCR car if they are no good?!
The leading cars completed 50 laps in the (safety car laden) 2 hour Oulton Park race -- a 1-2 for Seat Leon TCRs no less while the Lotus and Ginetta struck mechanical troubles, so TCRs can't be
that unreliable, can they?
I concur with gravin and find it dubious you could build your own hot hatch with a chrome moly cage, DSG or Sadev gearbox, two-way Ohlins, AP Racing brakes and functional aero for less than the $100,000AUD/50,000GBP you'd spend on an older TCR.
If the EA888 engine pops you can get another one, they are cheap, or do something fun like the TDI engine in the Audi TT to promote your diesel tuning shop (that's a DSG car rather than a sequential car).
It will take a small tuning workshop a lot of design time and knowledge to design better race-spec control arms than what comes on the TCR too -- what price do you put on ready supplied development?
(Are a lot of these tuning shops running TCRs which are out-of-life on their control arms and uprights, while having no facilities to crack test them between every round (not they could bother/afford to do so)? Probably, but that's nothing new in club racing! Some of the tuning shop-built cars like the E46 M3s or Lotus Elise are probably as bad or worse for some parts being outside of their design spec or component life!)
The Australian racing category that is most similar are probably the "300" enduros:
https://www.speedcafe.com/2023/07/17...ns-sydney-300/ If you think the winning tuning shop-built BYP Racing Honda Integra DC2 with its supercharged K24 (and hardened gears in a standard Honda gearbox, not a Sadev) has better reliability, more careful component lifing or is easier to repair crash damage than a JAS Motorsport Civic TCR, I have a Sydney Harbour Bridge to sell you!