The big preview - an epic season ends in Macau
This weekend, the 2024 KUMHO FIA TCR World Tour season comes to end at its traditional resting place, the Guia circuit of Macau.
It’s one of the closest years in world touring cars in history, seven drivers go to the Macau circuit with a chance of becoming the series’ champion. Though I’ll only focus on the top five, as Néstor Girolami and Santiago Urrutia are very much the outliers, and should fall out of mathematical contention soon into the weekend (unless things go absolutely crazy).
Admittedly, the season is really close in part due to the curtailed calendar of the season (though it still exceeds the COVID-hit 2020 calendar length), with the problems in the Suez canal affecting international transit early on in the year, which forced the cancellation of the Australian rounds, which will return in 2025.
Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing driver Norbert Michelisz can win a third world title, and his second in a row, and the Hungarian has remarkably led the standings for the whole season. That said, he is only ten points ahead, which means theoretically the title leader could change hands after qualifying alone.
The championship – how it’s unfolded – Norbert Michelisz
Looking over the course of the season, you can see how Michelisz has led the way since day one, but on two occasions his lead has been significantly closed up.
The first time Michelisz’s points gap closed up was at the first race at Morocco, heading into the weekend with full weight after his results at Vallelunga, he couldn’t make the most of Race 1. In Race 2, the race didn’t actually go much better as he was involved in a contratemps with title rival Yann Ehrlacher into the first corner, but as Michelisz managed to carry on and score key points, Ehrlacher racked up an early DNF in the season, one of the many pain points for the Frenchman.
The next time Michelisz’s lead evaporated was at the first race in Brazil, with the Elantra N TCR of the BRC Hyundai Squadra Corse team seriously struggling for pace that weekend. Michelisz scored a sixth-place finish from a tenth-place start, while it was Race 2 which should be considered to be the drive of the season – at least certainly his. Holding off the chasing Lynk & Co of Ma Qing Hua with a sluggish car for the whole race was an incredible achievement, and if he should win the title, it’s possible that drive alone will be remembered as what sealed it.
Since then, Michelisz hasn’t finished on the podium. A pair of fourth-place finishes in Uruguay were good for points building, but two lower top ten finishes in China has seen the title close up significantly heading into this weekend’s finale.
That does have a positive effect however, as Michelisz goes into the weekend without compensation weight for the first time since Mid-Ohio five months ago.
If Michelisz wins the title
If the likeable Hungarian picks up the title, it’s a good news story again for Hyundai Motorsport, especially in a year where they may finally also win that elusive FIA World Rally Championship title (and also something to rest on if they don’t). Michelisz still stands out as one of the European country’s major sporting stars, and most drivers on the grid wouldn’t begrudge him the title, with perhaps one or two exceptions.
The unlikely contender – Esteban Guerrieri
It feels strange calling out Guerrieri as the dark horse, as the Argentinian driver has been one of the standout stars on the international touring car scene, ever since his one-off outing in the FIA World Touring Car Championship in 2016 launched his full-time career the following year. In 2017 his association with Honda also began, through difficult circumstances, taking over from the injured Tiago Monteiro, and was consistently a title contender, coming the closest in 2019, the year in which Michelisz won his first title in the WTCR – FIA World Touring Car Cup.
With Honda’s support for touring cars waning with its concern over more heavily funded manufacturer programmes competing against it, Guerrieri hedged his bets and started getting involved in sports car racing. Sadly for him, but good for this year’s TCR World Tour, the Vanwell project came to an end last year, and with Hyundai swooping up the now privately supported Néstor Girolami to join its programme, JAS Motorsport, the now standalone developers of the Honda Civic Type R, signed up Guerrieri to join new outfit GOAT Racing this year.
The first key stat is of the big five title contenders, Guerrieri has the highest average finishing position all year, of 4.3. This is against 4.8 for Michelisz, and 4.9 for Thed Björk.
The reason he’s behind in points is less about his racing prowess, but qualifying pace. Of the top five title contenders, Guerrieri is the lowest average qualifier at 5.8 (compared to Ehrlacher’s exceptional 2.8), and with 15 points available for pole position scaling down to two for sixth place, this has contributed to his ten-point deficit going into the last race.
With 20kg of ballast, that may hamper him in qualifying at the difficult Guia circuit, but it’s his race performances which could make the difference, at a track where he proved his mettle in 2018, holding off Macau meister Rob Huff for a full race distance to claim his first win in the Münnich Motorsport Honda.
If Guerrieri wins the title
It’s a big surprise, not only as it’s Guerrieri’s first touring car title (as he only raced full-time for a limited period in Argentina), but also for fledgling privateer team GOAT Racing, and for a private project without manufacturer support behind its drivers.
It’ll be a shot in the arm for any privateers who think beating the might of Hyundai and Geely Group Motorsport is impossible, and also could rekindle interest from the closely watching Honda Racing Company.
Thed Björk - the surprise front-runner from Cyan Racing?
Going into Macau, Björk has been on a roll, at least for the last two thirds of this season. The four-time Swedish champion and 2017 WTCC champion is having his best year since world touring cars adopted the TCR formula in 2018.
It’s important to note that the Swedish driver has already handed points to his team-mates this year, as earlier in the year it seemed less likely he was going to be their title challenger. In the USA, where he had the opportunity to score the first double victory in the TCR World Tour, he handed over the lead to Ehrlacher, though his lead did come in part as Ehrlacher let him loose to have a go at race leader Marco Butti, in what turned out to be one of the most incredible races of the season.
Björk is a robust, old school touring car racer. His contact with Butti earned him a penalty in the USA, as did a lunge he made on Guerrieri the previous round at Morocco, so he’s also lost points through racing incidents this year.
Nevertheless, he goes in as Lynk & Co Cyan Racing’s point man after a consistent and strong season, even though on paper, there’s no question his French team-mate Yann Ehrlacher is the quicker driver on the whole.
Still, if a championship was just about speed, we’d only do qualifying.
If Björk wins the title
It’ll be a remarkable achievement for the former champion, whose 2017 title is much overlooked despite it being in one of the most competitive touring car seasons I’ve ever witnessed. Just a month shy of his 44th birthday, it’ll also be a positive mark for experience, but given Hyundai team manager Gabriele Tarquini was winning titles well into his late 50s, we’re not learning anything new about the racing lifespan of touring car drivers.
In Sweden, circuit motorsport interest has diminished significantly in recent years, especially due to the diminished profile of the STCC, which just over a decade ago was one of the strongest touring car categories in the world (during the time Björk was winning titles there). This will be a boost in that regard, but much less noticeable than a Michelisz or Guerrieri crown.
Yann Ehrlacher - the fast and the most unfortunate
2024 is arguably Ehrlacher’s best-worst season. Looking at some of the stats are incredible – as I’ve previously mentioned, he’s the top qualifier, and by some way, 2.8 to Michelisz’s 4.8, with two pole positions. His worst qualifying, seventh in the USA, can also almost be discounted as he was carrying an engine penalty from Morocco, and so the target was to be as low in the top ten as possible and focus on getting a good spot for the reversed Race 2 grid (which worked, resulting in his second of three victories this season).
While his 2023 title was lost in just one incident in Argentina, he’s had four run-ins this year which has cost him ground, and to still go to Macau with an outside chance of the title, 25 points back, is truly exceptional.
His average positions gained total of -1.5 is affected by just that. Morocco was his only DNF, while incidents in Italy, Brazil, and Uruguay saw him trail around to the finish to try and pick up what he could, but with the TCR South America field appended to the grid, 20th and 21st place finishes in that region wielded no points, and a detrimental “positions gained” metric.
If Ehrlacher wins the title
As if Björk wins, of course Lynk & Co Cyan Racing, the team which arguably put a significant budget into their TCR World Tour programme, will be elated. Also it means we must have just had one of the most exciting Macau finales of all time, as to turn around a 25-point deficit with such a close field will be a remarkable achievement.
Mikel Azcona’s strong but mixed season
Mikel Azcona also remains in mathematical contention, but the fear is that Hyundai may finally have to go all Multi 21 from the get-go here in order to safeguard Michelisz’s challenge. Azcona’s exceptional win (and remarkably his first since win) in the wet netted him a big points boost which reinvigorated his title charge, but it’s also netted him another 30kg of ballast to carry – the same ballast he carried in China to be fair – but does that mean the 2022 champion has to pray for rain?
His outlook is he’ll do as the team asks of him, and if it turns out he’s in a position to win the title, especially perhaps from a reversed grid position, he’s a key back up prospect for Hyundai.
Ultimately he’s also handed points to his team-mate, defending Michelisz in China and dropping behind him in Race 2, as well as in Race 1 at Mid-Ohio, the race he definitely would have won if he hadn’t suffered a broken anti-roll bar.
If Azcona wins the title
What a comeback. A validation for the final WTCR champion of 2022, one on the radar in the FIA Formula E World Championship, and one of the more promising newer generation of touring car drivers, in fact one whose entire career has come during the TCR era.
Key stats
Championship standings before Macau
Norbert Michelisz 274 points
Esteban Guerrieri 264
Thed Björk 255
Yann Ehrlacher 251
Mikel Azcona 247
Average finishing position
Esteban Guerrieri 4.3
Norbert Michelisz 4.8
Thed Björk 4.9
Mikel Azcona 5.6
Yann Ehrlacher 7.0
Average qualifying position
Yann Ehrlacher 2.8
Norbert Michelisz 4.0
Mikel Azcona 5.0
Thed Björk 5.7
Esteban Guerrieri 5.8
Average positions gained
Thed Björk 1.5
Esteban Guerrieri 1.2
Mikel Azcona 1.2
Norbert Michelisz 0.7
Yann Ehrlacher -1.5
