2024 Argentine Touring Cars

[TuteZaek]

The TC will race the first "Copa de Oro" race this weekend at the Rosendo Hernandez track at San Luis, with a load of engine ruleset changes and 3 new cars.

Santero (Ford Mustang-LCA Racing) starts as the leader of the mini-tournament with 23 points, with 2022 and 2023 champions Urcera (Ford Mustang-Moriatis Competicion) and Werner (Ford Mustang-Fadel Memo Corse), Esteban Gini (Toyota Camry-Maquin Parts Racing) and Valentin Aguirre (Chevrolet Camaro-Canning Motorsport) chasing behind with 8 points each product of their respective wins in the regular season.
Something to note, Aguirre's engine was found to have some irregularities in its cylinder head and as a penalty will have to start from last place in the series he is asigned to race acording to his qualy. His engine builder Giustozzi was also charged with a 1,5 millon pesos fine.
There isn't, at the moments, details about what was specifically the irregularity on Aguirres head.

Now, onto the new cars:

Otto Fritzler will debut its Dodge Challenger, and the Pradecom team learned how to design good liveries, it took 3 tries (Ledesma's Camaro Debut, Ledesma's first part of the year, and Ledesma's Buenos Aires)



Lautaro de la Iglesia will drive the other debuting Challenger, with his traditional nice and simple livery with Argentina's flag colors that looks really good on the car



One thing to note about those two, they're on the new Challenger spec mandated by the ACTC (that forced some delays in the Challenger armada, with 2 more cars coming in the next races, Vazquez and Castellao) while Trucco afaik is still on the Bs. As. winning spec car, so it will be interesting.


Finally Matias Jalaf will be debuting his Mustang built on the base of his old Falcon, also, another nice livery.



In terms of cars, another curiosity is that there is a single Falcon in the paddock as of now in the hands of Spataro, and a single Chevy, driven by Bonelli with the sunset now being closer for the old gen cars.
(That said, Ponce could do a race or two more with the Falcon before starting his Mustang, and Dose wants to be the last one racing a Chevy)
Torinos are already gone i think, but Abella could race again this year with only the Dodge GTXs remaining in numbers and with only Chapur (Already confirmed) and Carinelli (this one, not confirmed) to end the year in theirs.

[TuteZaek]

Now on the rule changes:
The Challenger had a lot of changes mandated, mainly to restore it's appeareance to be more close to the street car, Di Meglio (the Challenger prototype builder) wasn't too happy, but nonetheless he completed De la Iglesia's one, and will change Trucco's winning car to comply on the next races (There is kinda a grace period because the changes were kinda sudden, thats why Castellano's and Vazquez didn't debut theirs at this race)

To offset the posible loss on speed, they're given more displacement, and will be the most powerfull TC car in the paddock.

New engine regs (old values in brackets)

Dodge Challenger: 3.500 cc (3.260 cc, 290cc increase) 8900 rpm max

Dodge GTX: 3.460 cc (3.260 cc, 200 cc increase) 8900 rpm max

Toyota Camry: 3.500 cc (3.310 cc 190 cc increase) 8900 rpm max

Torino (Both Models) 3.460 cc (3.310 cc, 150 cc increase) 8900 rpm max

Ford (Both models) 3.400 cc (3.260 cc, 140 cc increase) 8800 rpm max

Chevrolet: 3.460 cc (3.260 cc, 200 cc increase) 8700 rpm max for the Camaro, 8900 for the Chevy

All of this with a 10,5:1 compression ratio for all engines and models.

The expected increase on power is 36hp for the Challenger, 28hp for the GTX and Chevrolets, 24hp for the Camry and 20hp for the Torino and Fords
The Torino teams, specially Trotta/ACRA are kinda baffled from this having the smallest update together with the Mustang, but while the Ford has been the dominant car in the season, the Torino's only victory came after last lap eliminations and technical revisions after the race, and in fact, there is no Torino on the "Copa"

With all the changes this year, we're way over the 500hp mark, and afaik, dancing in the 550's range.
There is also talk of going FI for next year (even before the new blocks for 2026)

[Adamcas87]

Updates on TC2000 Future?

I see a deal been agreed but will that be a new series with ACTC

[Andrew Abbott]

Originally Posted by Adamcas87

Updates on TC2000 Future?

I see a deal been agreed but will that be a new series with ACTC

Where have you seen that?

[NaBUru38]

The ACTC-run "Turismo Carretera 2000" (or whaterver name they choose) is official.

https://campeones.com.ar/mazzacane-r...vo-campeonato/

Meanwhile Tango Sport has threatened with an intellectual property lawsuit for some spec car parts.

https://www.carburando.com/notas/tc2...ntos-elementos

[NaBUru38]

After the Turismo Carretera race, Esteban Gini filed a complaint for technical infringements of some rivals.

Ardusso was excluded for an illegal air intake.

José Manuel Urcera was excluded because his car wasn't sent to the technical inspectors at all (!).


Mind that Ardusso's team owner is Roberto Valle, who is leading the exodus of TC2000 teams to the ACTC. And Urcera's team owner is Emanuel Moriatis, president of the Turismo Nacional organization (APAT), which switched from the CDA to ACTC sanctioning this year.

https://campeones.com.ar/tc-en-san-l...o-por-tecnica/

Worst of all, an ACTC executive said about the exclusions: "This is not pretty, but since there was a complaint, regrettably... obviously we had to do it".

https://www.carburando.com/notas/tc-...a-la-categoria

[TuteZaek]

The week i'm stuffed with work and can't even think about races are the most "interesting" ones.

TC: What a mess, and Gini even continued attacking Fritzler (Who's Challenger actually passed the revision with no problems) on instagram, this is gonna be weird, specially with Urcera's case (The engine was being dissasembled, they did the revision in public, for everyone to see, but they suddenly said..."no, we're not continuing"... really strange)

TC2000: and another chapter of the telenovela is up... we need a sudden pregnancy and a long lost identical twin and we get a bingo.
Jokes aside, the Levy's (Tango) doesn't seem like people that compromise in anything, they're losing everything and they're not changing anything and they don't look open to dialogue... another weird thing.
The ACTC2000 (or whatever is called) seems an interesting first step, specially if, as rumors say, Chevrolet is coming back as a works team with Canapino as a driver.