Cyan-ara, as the world cup starts up at Zolder

After 272 days, the WTCR - FIA World Touring Car Cup was finally in action again at a hastily rescheduled season-opener at the Circuit Zolder in Belgium, which last hosted a World Touring Car round back in 2011 - and the first signs are that it’s Cyan Racing and the Lynk & Co manufacturer’s to lose - with Honda Racing having a half-lucky weekend keeping them at least close, while Hyundai Motorsport has made its dissatisfaction with the new technical changes for 2020 very clear after a dismal weekend for the South Korean marque.

Comtoyou Racing come to the front in qualifying

Rocking the boat somewhat was the Belgian Comtoyou Racing team, despite losing their full Audi Sport customer racing supported status, and with it their drivers Frédéric Vervisch and Niels Langeveld.

The Frameries-based team turned heads throughout practice and qualifying, with Nathanaël Berthon securing a shock pole position in his Audi RS 3 LMS by 0.031 seconds over the Lynk & Co of Yann Ehrlacher, with his Audi team-mates Gilles Magnus, a TCR Europe series graduate and WTCR rookie, and Tom Coronel, the longest serving driver on the grid, qualifying third and sixth.

The Audi was the fastest car throughout race day as well, although ultimately none of them would finish in the top three in either race.

While Balance of Performance would usually come under scrutiny rather quickly when a privateer outfit outpaces all the manufacturer-supported programmes, it was mostly* quiet across the other teams and through the organising bodies of FIA and WSC Group, and there were some mitigating factors in why the Audi, which was relatively off the pace through most of 2019, had made such leap forward.

Firstly, it’s the circuit that the team know the most - being its home circuit, and one it had done most of its pre-season testing at even before it was known to be the WTCR’s season-opener. And secondly, the RS 3s are sporting a long overdue upgrade package, despite the manufacturer’s abandonment of the Audi 8V TCR project late last year.

Nat Berthon (Comtoyou Racing Audi), pole position:

Obviously we have done very good work pre-season with the time to test, and the guys did a really good job with the Audi.

My lap was pretty quick, especially the last sector. I knew I had to give it everything, and the car give it. So, I’m pretty happy.

Tom Coronel (Comtoyou Racing Audi), sixth-fastest in qualifying:

P6 is my best result in the last two years so that’s a good result.

We did a lot of testing with the Audi and that must have helped also. We also did some races pre-season to get prepared and, I think we’re well prepared within the whole team.”

Race 1: It’s tough to pass at Zolder

The first race is the one with the top-ten reversed-grid from qualifying, which handed pole position to Argentina’s Néstor Girolami in the ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic TCR, with Jean-Karl Vernay starting alongside at his new berth in the Team Mulsanne Alfa Romeo.

Vernay got mugged at the start however, and it was 2017 world champion Thed Björk who was quickly up to second in his Cyan Racing Lynk & Co 03 TCR, with Attila Tassi third in the next-best-placed Münnich Motorsport Honda.

The race was pretty much fixed from then-on up front, while there was some manoeuvring in the midfield, but most of the drama came from the Honda, with the cars of Esteban Guerrieri and Tiago Monteiro stopping with near-identical engine issues, which were put down to broken radiators from flying stones.

Girolami held on to take his fourth career WTCR victory ahead of Björk and Tassi, with Tassi securing his first podium in his second full year of competition, and Girolami at this point edged ahead in the championship standings.

Néstor Girolami (ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport Honda), Race 1 winner:

To get a victory and be second in the championship is an excellent way to start the season, particularly as it was a tough weekend for us.

In Race 2 I maximised the opportunity we had at the start; it was really important to overtake two cars, because we saw in Race 1 that it's so difficult to overtake. In our case, we minimised the damage this weekend because it wasn’t easy for any of us. It's a shame for my team-mates that they had issues, but I think everyone at Münnich Motorsport did the maximum possible and I want to congratulate all my crew and the team again for turning out the four cars; it’s not easy, but they managed to do it very well.

Race 2: Lynk & Cos jump to the front, while Berthon just jumps

In the second race, the Lynk & Co Cyan Racing operation scored a perfect 1-2-3 podium lockout, while things fell apart for the Comtoyou Racing team after much promise. Berthon’s car crept before the red lights went out, which earned the Frenchman a drive-through penalty, and while Gilles Magnus was challenging Ehrlacher for what would eventually become the lead early-on, the Audi driver’s fight faded due to a fuel pump issue, and he dropped back in the later stages of the race, passed by four-time world champion Yvan Muller, and Cyan Racing’s new-boy Santiago Urrutia.

The battle up front wasn’t as entertaining as the fight for the final points-paying places, with WTCR debutant Jack Young giving the new Vuković Motorsport-developed Renault Mégane RS TCR a competitive debut.

The Northern Irishman was fighting among the recovering Hondas of Tiago Monteiro and Attila Tassi, and the pace-less Hyundai i30 N TCR of touring car statesman Gabriele Tarquini for 14th position, with Young unceremoniously knocked into the gravel by Tassi, with the 21-year-old given a time penalty post-race.

So it was an easy-1-2-3 for Cyan Racing and Lynk & Co during the main race of round one, with their two teams now first and second in the teams’ standings, and with Ehrlacher seven points clear of Honda driver Girolami in the drivers’ standings, and 12 points clear of team-mate ‘Uncle Yvan’.

Yann Ehrlacher (Lynk & Co Cyan Racing), Race 2 winner:

I saw (Berthon) jumped the start, but he still did two or three laps and he had really good pace. It would have been good for me to follow that pace, but then he went to the box and I had my way free to work on my pace and save my tyres to the end, because it is quite a long race.

Then I started to build a gap to the guy behind me. The race went really well, and I’m really pleased that we had three Lynk & Cos on the podium.

Cyan’s pace is threatening…Hyundai are lost at sea

While the Audis were running interference this weekend, it’ll be difficult for the privateer operation to stay there throughout the full year, especially if it turns out their pace at Zolder was more due to home advantage.

The fear is more the pace of the Honda and Hyundai teams across the two days.

It could be the characteristics of the circuit of course, but should it not be, it doesn’t bode well for either manufacturer, with Lynk & Co notably quicker. The Hondas were barely within half a second of the Lynk & Cos pace in qualifying, while the Hyundais, winners of the past two drivers’ titles, were more than a second out.

While Honda still had a relatively good weekend, at least thanks to Girolami’s victory and fifth place, the engine troubles and incidents faced by his three team-mates mean they’re already scattered around the points table - and it could be argued that Girolami’s points haul is mostly thanks to his reversed-grid pole and the fact that passing at Zolder is famously near-impossible.

The two Hyundai Motorsport customer teams though were uncompetitive, and fighting for the small points, with eighth, ninth and tenth in Race 2 for Norbert Michelisz, Nicky Catsburg and Luca Engstler their best result.

Team principal Andrea Adamo spoke to many in the pit lane venting his frustration with the change to the new Magneti Marelli ECU, which came into force this season, also focussing on the fact the three Audis are not running it due to lack of support from Audi Sport customer racing - for which the Audis are having to carry an additional 20kg of ballast in order to try and compensate.

The ultimate statement from Hyundai Motorsport was the lack of a statement at all at the end of the day, with their leading BRC Racing Team outfit putting out one of the shortest press releases on record:

Statement regarding WTCR Race Of Belgium:

BRC Hyundai N LUKOIL Squadra Corse feels the situation is clear and any further statement about the Race Of Belgium is pointless.

The Audi was in fact the fastest car across the weekend, but the Lynk & Cos were close in qualifying, though faded away in the race, as this graphic shows:

On race pace, it would appear the Lynk & Cos dropped away even further than the Hondas in Race 1, though the best time there from Néstor Girolami came with the Honda driver in clear air.

Four-time champion Yvan Muller, driving the #100 Lynk & Co Cyan Racing entry, said it was adapting to the new Goodyear tyres that contributed to the loss of pace in the race.

Yvan Muller (Lynk & Co Cyan Racing), said:

These new tyres are very different to the tyres we have used for the last ten years and we still have a lot to work and learn about them. But it is the same for everyone. We struggled a bit, I think everybody struggled. Maybe we struggled a bit less in qualifying because we found a way, but we have still not found a way in the race. Our pace in the race was not quick enough.

Can anyone stop the Cyans?

There’s no question Cyan Racing have come in guns blazing this year. Although no one has sat still, it looks like the Swedish operation have spent the prolonged off-season moving about frenetically.

While still running four cars, just a glance at the pit wall, and you can see the team have been adding new hires, with top engineering talent recruited from Audi Sport, Volkswagen Motorsport, and Hyundai during the off-season to bolster its already top-level technical team.

With that level of investment, a leap forward would be expected, but is it a leap out of reach?

At the season-opener in Morocco last year, it was clear that the Volkswagen Group cars had a lot of work to do, while Lynk & Co, Honda, and Hyundai were all very close, and that stayed the way throughout the season, leading to an epic showdown in Malaysia between the three manufacturers and their leading charges - meanwhile the Volkswagen Group had called time on their programme weeks before.

Hopefully this year, one race alone won’t tell the tale of the season, as few expect one manufacturer to dominate in touring car racing.

And it could be the case that this time, it’s Honda and Hyundai reconsidering their programmes against what appears to be an unstoppable force - but before we get carried away, compensation weight will be applied to the fastest cars, but only after we’re already two race weekends (and by that, we now mean a third of the way) into the season at Slovakia.