Nine times World Rally champion Sébastien Loeb is arguably the most awaited driver. Motor sport fans and media are eager to see how the Frenchman will perform on his maiden WTCC races, facing some of the touring car toughest gurus who are led by his own team-mate at Citroën Racing Yvan Muller, the reigning champion who boasts four WTCC titles.
Two other world champions make the field: Castrol Honda Team’s Gabriele Tarquini who was crowned in 2009 and Rob Huff who clinched the title in 2012 and now joined LADA Sport Lukoil. These four men have collected fifteen world championships altogether.
There are many other strong competitors who will be aiming for stealing the limelight from them, such as former F1 podium finishers Tiago Monteiro (Castrol Honda Team) and Gianni Morbidelli (ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport) and WTCC race winners James Thompson (LADA Sport Lukoil), Tom Coronel and Tom Chilton (both ROAL Motorsport), Norbert Michelisz (Zengö Motorsport) and José María López (Citroën Racing).
The field is comprised of twenty cars: sixteen new TC1 machines and four in the TC2T class.