Global Information2014 World Touring Car Championship information
The 2014 FIA World Touring Car Championship was a motor racing competition organised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for Super 2000 Cars.[1] It was the eleventh FIA World Touring Car Championship, and the tenth since the series was revived in 2005.
After making a race-winning début on home soil during the 2013 campaign, Argentina's José María López won the drivers' championship after performing strongest during the season.[2] Driving for the Citroën team, López won ten races during the season, significantly more than team-mates Yvan Muller – the defending series champion – and Sébastien Loeb, who was in his first season in the championship. López finished all but one race during the season, with his only retirement coming during the second race in Russia,[3] and finished the season 126 points clear of his next closest challenger, which was Muller. Muller took four victories during the season, all coming from pole position. Loeb finished a further 41 points behind Muller, taking a pair of victories, in Morocco and the only race in Slovakia.
Only one other driver won more than one race, as Robert Huff won the first races for Lada Sport in the World Touring Car Championship. Huff won the second races in Beijing and Macau; his win in the latter was his seventh at the circuit,[4] over the previous seven years. Single race winners during 2014 were Gabriele Tarquini (Japan), Tom Chilton (Beijing), Gianni Morbidelli (Hungary), Mehdi Bennani (Shanghai) and Ma Qing Hua in Russia. Morbidelli's win was his first in the series, while the victories for Bennani and Ma were the first in FIA competition for their respective countries, Morocco and China.[3][5]
Citroën dominated the manufacturers' championship, taking a total of 17 overall wins out of the 23 races. The marque finished almost 300 points clear of Honda, who finished in second position. In the TC2-only Yokohama Drivers' Trophy, Franz Engstler finished well clear of the field in his final WTCC season before moving to the TCR International Series. Engstler achieved 20 victories and a pair of second places from 23 starts, and finished 90 points clear of closest rival John Filippi, who won the second race in Japan. The other race winners were Pasquale Di Sabatino in Hungary, and ETCC regular Petr Fulín, who won the race in Slovakia. In the Yokohama Teams' Trophy for non-manufacturer teams, ROAL Motorsport, with Chilton and Tom Coronel as its drivers, finished 91 points clear of the single-car team of Zengő Motorsport and driver Norbert Michelisz. The Yokohama Performer of the Year award went to López, taking the most fastest laps of the season, with eleven.
- ^ "2014 Sporting regulations – FIA World Touring Car Championship" (PDF). FIA.com. Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 18 July 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 November 2014. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ^ "Standings – Drivers' Championship". World Touring Car Championship. Kigema Sport Organisation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 November 2014. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ^ a b "Race 2 – Ma writes motorsport history". World Touring Car Championship. Kigema Sport Organisation. 8 June 2014. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
- ^ "Race 2 – Huff is the King of Macau". FIA.com. Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 16 November 2014. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
- ^ "Bennani overwhelmed by first WTCC win". Crash.net. Crash Media Group. 13 October 2014. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
Mehdi Bennani says he feels like he is 'living in a dream' as he became the first Moroccan to win a world championship motorsport event with victory in Shanghai.