The new FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), which gets under way at Monza on April 10, is a mere youngster iterms of motorsports.
Developed from the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) launched at Monza four years ago, the WTCC 10-race 2005 season opens at the same track. The competition doesn't yet have the cachet of either Formula One or the World Rally Championship (WRC), but with a projected average 45,000 spectators attending each of the season's events, and an as yet undetermined number of TV viewers around the world, it will not be slow in growing.
Marcello Lotti, general manager of the WTCC, is very enthusiastic about the project - and enthusiasm and passion are what drives this kind of thing.
He has both aplenty. Having had his first taste of motorsport in rallying at 19, and latterly being BMW's motorsport team manager for 12 years, he also has a tankload of experience. "It's five years since I 'invented' this job, and now my ship is coming into port," he says with a smile.
The ETCC, Lotti's road to the world championship dream, has involved several key marques and a variety of works and privateer teams. For the new series Alfa Romeo, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda and SEAT marques will battle it out. China's Brilliance is expected to join before the end of the year, and Peugeot is expected to compete in 2006.
Chevrolet is putting a bootful of money into a three-year plan to gain motorsport cred for its Daewoo brand in Europe. The very distinctive blue-on-blue and white Chevrolet Lacettis are starting from scratch, and though nobody expects extraordinary results immediately, the cars are going to be quite visible.
"I know it's not easy for them in the beginning," says Lotti. "They are competing with other manufacturers who have spent three years developing their cars. But, from what I've seen at these first tests, I think that there will be a really strong Chevrolet car in the first three or four races."
The WTCC is more accessible than Formula One or WRC, and that's important as far as Lotti is concerned. "We have an open paddock, so the spectators can come in and meet the drivers, touch the cars," he notes. "We also run promotions before the races. The Thursday before Monza, for instance, we will have an exhibition of the cars in the centre of Milan, with autograph opportunities for the fans. We will do the same in Trafalgar Square in London before Silverstone."
A considerably lower entry cost for the "pilota" and their teams allows young drivers to get the kind of experience that may lead them to even higher things.
For the car companies, it costs substantially less than the more exotic sports. "For a privateer team, it could cost up to €1.5m a year to develop a car and compete. For a manufacturer-supported team, depending on what stage they have to take the car from, it could cost from €3 to €5 million."