CUPRA Racing opens up on new Leon VZ and expectations for 2024

Franco Girolami’s Monlau Motorsport CUPRA Leon VZ TCR at Vallelunga. Photo: Martin Trenkler

CUPRA Racing will introduce a new car which is also available as substantial upgrade on its successful Leon Competición TCR this year, the new Leon VZ TCR. CUPRA Racing’s head Xavi Serra explains the upgrades and expectations, as well as its pre-sales success.

The car has already been a hot seller, with Serra reporting “half of the planned production for 2024 is already booked”, with consideration underway to extend the planned volume. The Leon VZ TCR now becomes the only car to be built from the manufacturer’s Martelli base, which until recently also produced the Audi RS 3 LMS gen II for Audi Sport customer racing.

Title winners W2 Pro GP in TCR South America, and Expres Auto Racing in TCR Eastern Europe are the first two teams to confirm they are switching to the new car, with many others known to have been ordered. The car hasn’t had the chance to race yet, but it was it was spotted being tested by development driver Jordi Gené at Jerez last month ahead of the TCR Spain pre-season series opener.

“The new CUPRA Leon VZ TCR will have an updated design in line with the CUPRA design language of our road cars,” explained Serra.

“The car will feature new front kinematics which are intended to fit best with the latest control tyres that most of TCR series have adopted”, he added, referring to South Korean brand KUMHO having become the most common tyre supplier across the category.

“The CUPRA Leon Competición was designed back in 2019 and five years later most of the series are not using the same tyres anymore, therefore we wanted to provide a more suitable window for set-up.”

The new car will also offer the French-built SADEV gearbox as an option, alongside the Hewland unit which was available in the Leon Competición, much as the later Audi RS 3s had both gearboxes as options for competitors.

“We’re adding the SADEV to the homologation and offering the first units of the CUPRA Leon VZ TCR with this,” explained Serra. “However, customers that currently run the Hewland one and would like to upgrade their cars via the VZ kit — will be able to keep the current gearbox and its spares except the gear ratios that will be modified since according to regulations to standardise two different gearboxes for the same car model, their respective gear ratios might not differ more than 3%.

“All in all, it will provide more flexibility to our customers depending on their needs and since we are dealing with a large customer base, it will secure a backup plan to face and cope with potential supply shortages or much longer delivery delays that the industry is already working with.”

Raphael Reis’ W2 Pro GP CUPRA Leon VZ TCR at Interlagos. Photo: TCR South America

While the majority of TCR competition is aimed towards sprint racing, there is a fairly active community of racers and teams who compete with TCR in endurance racing, and this has been where the CUPRA and Audi cars have very much had the market share to-date.

The first generation CUPRA TCR and Audi RS 3 LMS have been a mainstay of the endurance racing scene, in championships such as the 24HSERIES and also at the Nurburgring 24 Hours — and for 2024 new dedicated TCR series have been established in Europe and Asia to cater for endurance racing as well.

The CUPRA Leon Competición and the second-generation Audi RS 3 LMS have gradually been replacing their first generation counterparts in endurance racing, and the new Leon VZ is also expected to also be a very capable endurance racer.

“CUPRA has been the most popular TCR model used in endurance racing and still is today,” said Serra. “It’s true that the number of cars running such series have dropped compared to the previous CUPRA versions, but this void has not been filled by any other competitor, and we are still the benchmark.

“In my view, the latest TCR car designs across all the manufacturers are a lot focused on sprint races more and more and that explains a decline in their use for endurance races. However, at CUPRA we have very good examples, recently in December clinching a 1–2 in 24H Mexico, or like Monlau Competición (among some others) who claimed several endurances 6h-12h-24h victories and championship wins in almost as many appearances as they did with the CUPRA Leon Competición. So, the VZ TCR will not be an exception.”

Aurélien Comte’s SP Compétition CUPRA Leon VZ TCR at Vallelunga. Photo: Martin Trenkler

In 2024, CUPRA Racing will follow on in the spirit of its customer racing focus, and so no factory-driver supported programme as seen with Hyundai and Lynk & Co in the TCR World Tour will appear in any of the series, but CUPRA will continue to work with well-supported customer racing operations who will be able to challenge and win titles, as has been seen with teams like Campos Racing (WTCR), Hart GT with CBM (TCR UK), PWR Racing (TCR Scandinavia), W2 Pro GP (TCR South America), Volcano Motorsport (TCR Europe) and Scuderia del Girasole (TCR Italy) in the past.

“At CUPRA RACING we are proud of what our customers achieved and are still achieving. The CUPRA past versions up until the Leon Competición that keeps on clinching not only race wins, but championships like lately UK, Brazil and Spain hold lots of track record results and all of them in hands of our skilled customer teams.

“Therefore, these teams are the ones who choose where to race with the cars and, for sure, we will be supporting them.”