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TCR BLOCKED??

TCR Australia

By Auto Action

TCR Australia

First published in Auto Action #1700 December 22 2016

The man that planned to bring the successful TCR touring car class to Australia is in a fight with CAMS to bring the class to Australia.

Adam Hammond has had recent discussions with CAMS management in regards to the TCR class which have ultimately turned sour.

“The timing for me was really weird,” explained Hammond. “I didn’t have a problem and neither did TCR [management] in waiting until 2018 and doing it properly and the preferred situation was to run with the Shannons Nationals because with GT, Carrera Cup and TCR, I think we would have a really strong show. The only other platform is Supercars but that is incredibly expensive.”

Hammond has been in discussions with Australian GT’s Ken Collier to run with the GT Trophy class next year ahead of full season in 2018, but discussions with CAMS resulted in Hammond receiving two reasons why TCR cars cannot compete in Australia. In emails obtained by Auto Action the reasons for Hammond’s inability to run TCR was due to the naming rights to the words ‘Touring Car’ and that Supercars hold the rights to the technical regulations as much as the name, which in turn disallows CAMS to ‘award these rights to any other promoter.’

“There was a meeting with CAMS arranged for last Friday [with Ken Collier] which is why I found it really strange that CAMS was came up early with, ‘you can’t do it because

Supercars own the rights to the word Touring Cars in Australia,’ said Hammond. “I thought, well ok that’s just weird but by the way that’s a load of shit because TCR don’t use the words ‘Touring Cars’ and I don’t need to. But then for CAMS to actually responded, ‘or well it’s not actually the name it’s the technical regulations,’ I mean there front wheel drive and two litre turbos. And there has been no response to that whatsoever. The question now I’m asking is why CAMS are trying to block TCR with a bunch of smoky answers, which are clearly untrue.”

Hammond thinks there are three reasons why CAMS have blocked his introduction of TCR, including CAMS possibly bringing the class to Australia themselves.
“There are three options, number one is that someone’s got the shits and they’re just trying to block it or Supercars can see it’s a good thing and they’re trying to get in on the act or CAMS can see it’s a bloody good thing and trying to get in the act as well. Either way it was a really shitty way to handle it. To try and give me two very different excuses to why it wasn’t going to work in Australia.”

CAMS weren’t in a position to comment due to commercial restrictions.