Slimmer 2021 GTC series revving up for 20 March flag drop
Departure of Volkswagen will leave Toyota with the biggest entry.
Topping this year’s Global Touring Car entry lists will be four Toyota Corolla entries, running in the liveries of Gazoo Racing and Investchem, respectively.
South Africa’s premier circuit racing series for Global Touring Cars will undergo a number of changes this season. Set to commence during an Extreme Festival round at Killarney in Cape Town on 20 March, the series will start with a minimum of six cars.
That will exclude Volkswagen’s two rear-wheel drive Golf GTI models, that will instead be entered for selected long-distance events and the Knysna Hillclimb. Topping the 2021 GTC entry list will be four Toyota Corollas, two run by Toyota Gazoo Racing and two by Investchem Racing.
At this stage, a BMW M2 and a Ford Focus GTC have also been confirmed for the series, giving it the prerequisite six entries to be a South African national racing championship. Filling out the grids will be at least 11 Volkswagen SupaPolo cars, to create spectacle throughout the field. The GTC cars will have significant under the skin changes, brought about to correct flaws that previously blighted GTC reliability.
One of the former works BMW M2 models will appear in privateer hands this season.
” The initial batch of GTC race cars were not built to the correct specification in two areas — their chassis were prone to crack and while their Life electronic control systems were the best, the original wiring looms were not,” SA racing stalwart and Investchem Racing boss Ian Schofield explains. “That caused many reliability issues, and the cars got the unfortunate stigma of being expensive and brittle,” he added.
In an effort to right those wrongs, GTC did not constitute a championship in 2020 as the teams collectively decided to rather utilise the Covid-19 Lockdown pause to rectify those reliability issues.
“Our cars now have the correct chrome molybdenum steel chassis and race-spec wiring looms to match their ECUs. We have now tested the equivalent of a full season without any real problems, so we are confident that those troubles are now a thing of the past. For the rest, the GTC cars were always brilliantly put together — these are spectacular thoroughbred race cars and now that we have those issues addressed, we are sure GTC is on the threshold of a great new era,” Schofield added.
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