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STANDINGS
GUEST COLUMNIST
THIRD
PAGE
I can still remember the enigmatic email I
noticed on my phone while sitting in the
garden of my local pub in the summer of
2014. While my friend was at the bar, I read
of a new Touring Car concept that
was being introduced. There
were very few details, and I
wondered what it was all
about.
Some questions the
following day revealed
that it was a new
project by Marcello
Lotti, a project that
would ultimately become
TCR. Having spent my
entire working life in
motorsport, it’s natural to be
sceptical of new plans, but this
one sounded intriguing. And when
I caught up with my old friend David
Sonenscher in Macau later that year, I was
convinced that this was something that
could work.
Motorsport is never cheap, but what I like
about TCR is that it offers international
motor racing at a cost far more attainable
than we’ve had for many years. We all
reminisce about the golden days of Super
Touring in the 1990s, something we can
never see again, but from late 2014 I
realised that TCR offered the closest we can
ever get to that: machinery that could be
mass-produced and used in numerous
national, regional or international series
around the world.
Sure enough, we’ve seen several interesting
projects over the first two years of TCR.
These are not ‘dream’ cars, but they offer a
great way for competitors around the world
to have close, competitive and affordable
racing. I’m truly impressed by what TCR has
achieved since 2014, and look forward to
seeing how it evolves further!
Marcus Simmons
Deputy editor at Autosport
Marcus Simmons has spent his entire working
life as a motorsport journalist. He began at
Motoring News in 1990, before in 1996 joining
Autosport, where he covered the British Touring
Car Championship at its peak for three years.
He is currently deputy editor of Autosport
magazine, and usually covers junior single-
seater racing. But he has always had a fondness
for Touring Cars, dating back to childhood and
the great days of the Ford Capri versus the
Rover SD1 in the UK.
It all started with
an intriguing email…