Former Craft-Bamboo Racing driver Daniel Lloyd will replace Nicola Larini as the official TCR test driver for next week’s Balance of Performance (BoP) test in Valencia.
The 25-year old Brit, who scored a best finish of second in a half-season campaign in the TCR International Series last year, will test eleven cars set to be officially homologated for TCR competition in 2018.
Among the line-up of cars set to be balanced in Valencia includes the brand new Hyundai, Honda, Renault and Peugeot cars whilst Lada have sent one of their Vesta’s following a season spent running to a Russian national homologation.
Also represented will be Alfa Romeo, Audi, Kia, Opel, SEAT and Volkswagen, as well as the older spec Honda Civic which will continue to see track time in the various national championships this year.
Absent from the list, however, are Subaru and Ford with both projects seemingly brought to a halt in 2018. This is a particular shame for the TopRun developed WRX which showed front-running form in TCR Italy at the hands of Stefano Comini.
The Ford, meanwhile, has not seen the track since development swapped hands from Onyx Race Engineering to Hong Kong-based FRD Motorsports. The car was entered in 2 rounds of the 2016 TCR Asia season, but failed to start either.
The test, formerly held at Valencia in 2016, is organised for TCR officials to evaluate the performances of the cars with weight penalties, restrictors and minimum ride heights imposed in order to balance the competitiveness of each car.
Whilst the BoP test is organised to define the initial performance restricting parameters of each car, changes to the BoP can be made throughout the season at the discretion of the stewards.
