HONDA ANNOUNCE WTCC WORKS PROGRAMME
Today during a press conference in Tokyo, Honda announced they will join the FIA World Touring Car Championship.
Honda CEO Takanobu Ito explained: "We took the decision to enter in the WTCC with the European Civic. We will develop a totally new engine for this project and we are all excited about starting this new challenge."
For this project, Honda formed a joint partnership with Mugen and J.A.S. Motorsport. Mugen will manufacture a 1.6-litre turbo bespoke racing engine developed by Honda R&D and will maintain it at the races along with the team. J.A.S. Motorsport will develop the race car, using the new Honda Civic 5-door produced in Honda's manufacturing plant located in Swindon, UK.
Honda's ambition is to join the WTCC as early as this season, with a string of "inaugural rounds". Discussions are currently being held with the FIA, but these rounds would include Japan (on 21 October at Suzuka), China and Macau. Honda will then enter a two-car team, managed by J.A.S. Motorsport, in the full 2013 championship season.
Honda's commitment in motor sport dates back to Fifties (Isle of Man's Tourist Trophy) and the Sixties (fist F1 programme) and resulted several successes that include five F1 world titles in both the Drivers' and Manufacturers' championships.
Honda press release also reads: "The FIA WTCC is the next chapter in Honda's on-going commitment to world motor sport and provides a perfect platform to demonstrate its racing spirit to Honda's numerous fans around the world."
Olivier Fisch, Managing Director of Eurosport Events commented: "We are very pleased to welcome Honda in WTCC. Their commitment is a great reward for the huge, joint effort the FIA and Eurosport Events have done all these years to make the championship growing and become popular worldwide. We wish Honda to be successful in this new racing programme."
Eurosport Events is the group's expert division in the management and promotion of international sporting events.
FIA WTCC is 1237 hours of TV program, 750000 spectators, 459 millions of TV viewers.
The Eurosport Group is Europe's leading sports entertainment group. Eurosport, the n°1 pan-European TV channel, broadcasts in 20 languages and reaches 125 million homes across 59 countries. Eurosport HD is the high definition simulcast of Eurosport. Eurosport 2 broadcasts to 52 million households in 18 languages across 47 countries. Eurosport 2 HD was launched in August 2009. Eurosport Asia-Pacific reaches 17 countries in the region and launched HD channel in September 2011. Eurosportnews is the sports news channel transmitted worldwide. Eurosport.com, Europe's n°1 online sports destination, has over 15 million unique users per month (comScore) across an international network of sports websites in 11 languages, including Yahoo! co-branded sites in Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK. Eurosport Player, Eurosport's web TV service, provides LIVE and on-demand sports to fans' PCs in 59 countries and the Player mobile application is available in 10 countries.
Fabio Ravaioli - FIA WTCC Media Delegate
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