Following a nine-month wait for the WTCR – FIA World Touring Car Cup season to get underway, Honda’s customer racing teams now face a second round in three weekends as they prepare to take on the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany.
A victory and a podium respectively for the ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport and ALL-INKL.DE Münnich Motorsport teams at Zolder two weeks ago means both are up and running for 2020, while all four drivers have recent Nordschleife highlights to draw inspiration from in the hunt for silverware this weekend.
Nestor Girolami heads to Germany as the best-placed of the Honda Civic Type R TCR contingent, the ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport racer sitting second in the Drivers’ Championship thanks to a victory and a fifth place at the season opener.
‘Bebu’ showed a strong turn of speed at the 25.9km circuit last year, qualifying and finishing third – after a thrilling three-wide battle – in the opening race.
His team-mate Esteban Guerrieri has Nordschleife pedigree as well; the Argentinian claimed his first WTCR victory at the track in 2018, and last year set a new series record for the largest pole position margin – which stands at 6.032 seconds.
Esteban’s opening 2020 race weekend was anything but straightforward, but he bagged four vital points from the back row of the race-two grid and will hope to carry that momentum into the second round.
ALL-INKL.DE Münnich Motorsport’s Attila scored the best result of his rookie campaign in the WTCR at the ‘Green Hell’ last year, sealing fourth in race two despite having no pre-event knowledge of the track aside from pre-event simulator work.
He has gone one better than that already this season, scoring his first WTCR podium in the opening race at Zolder – a result the 21-year-old is hungry to build on.
Tiago Monteiro, who like Esteban is looking to bounce back from a tough season opener, also has success at the Nordschleife to call on, having been part of the class-winning Honda Civic Type R TCR squad in last year’s concurrent 24-hour race.
The WTCR event programme works alongside that contest again this year, with practice and qualifying staged on Thursday, race one taking place on Friday and race two on Saturday morning.
A two-race schedule for 2020 means Friday’s 40-minute qualifying takes on an additional significance, with double points awarded to the top-five qualifiers in the session.