Honda today announced that the Honda Civic will race in the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC).

"We have made a decision" said Honda CEO, Takanobu Ito "to enter into 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 has formed a joint partnership with Mugen and J.A.S. Motorsport. Mugen will manufacture a bespoke racing engine developed by Honda R&D and will maintain the engine in every race along with the team. J.A.S. Motorsport will develop the race car, using the new Honda Civic 5door produced in Honda's manufacturing plant located in Swindon (UK).

The racing engine is a 1.6 litre 4 cylinder direct injection turbo-charged petrol engine, developed in accordance with FIA's Super 2000 regulations.

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 (held on 21 October 2012 at Honda's Suzuka circuit), followed by China and Macau. Honda will then enter a two car team, managed by J.A.S. Motorsport, into every race in the 2013 championship season.

Racing has always been a fundamental element of Honda's DNA . In the late 1950s Honda first entered the Isle of man T.T and then Formula 1 in the 1960s. 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.
ENDS

Editors Notes:



About WTCC

• WTCC is the FIA World Touring Car Championship.
  
• Vehicle specification is strictly regulated by FIA Super 2000 category
  
• All vehicles who compete in the championship are based on mass production cars with more than than 4 seats.
  
• The championship is reserved for cars powered by a 1.6 litre petrol engine, turbo-charged with direct injection.
  
• The distance of each race varies between 50 km and 60km
  
• The full racing season covers 12 racing weekends (two races per weekend)

More information can be found at www.fiawtcc.com


About Mugen

• Mugen is a brand of M-TEC Co., Ltd. a company based in Saitama (Japan) whose main motorsport activities are: designing, development, manufacturing and marketing of racing engines; parts and components for Honda cars and technical services at racing circuit.
• M-TEC has subsidiaries in America (MUGEN America Inc. (U.S.A.)) and in Europe (MUGEN EURO Co., Limited (U.K.))

More information can be found at www.mugen-power.com/


About J.A.S Motorsport

• J.A.S Motorsport is a racing car builder and racing team founded in 1995 to compete mainly in touring car races. It became Honda's partner in 1997 as a works team in the Super Touring Car era (STW (Germany)) in 1998 &1999, BTCC (UK) in 2000 and has run Honda Racing Customer Support on behalf of Honda Motor Europe since 2001.
  
• Located in Milan, Italy, J.A.S Headquarters and factory consists of a surface area of 2500 square meters.
  
• J.A.S Motorsport's president is Maurizio Ambrogetti and Managing Director/Team Principal is Mr. Alessandro Mariani.

More information can be found at www.jasmotorsport.com

Last edited by JeffX on February 03, 2012 07:45