Just two weeks after starting the 2023 season at the Autodromo do Algarve near Portimão in Portugal, TCR Europe will be in action again this weekend at the Circuit de Pau Ville in southwestern France, the only street circuit on this year’s calendar.

At Portimão, Belgium’s Comtoyou Racing made their intentions of defending their clean sweep of 2022 titles clear. After dominating the TCR Europe field in the two Free Practice sessions and Qualifying, Race 1 was won by team newcomer John Filippi while Race 2 saw Tom Coronel take the maximum forty points for victory. The pair left Portugal tied at the head of the Drivers’ championship on eighty points apiece, with Filippi’s second place finish in Race 2 just giving him the edge in the standings. The pair are entered for the 2023 season in two ‘sister’ teams, with Comtoyou Racing five points ahead of Comtoyou in the Teams’ standings.

After setting the fastest time overall in Free Practice 2 but then retiring in Race 2 after contact with Dušan Borković, Belgian Rookie Kobe Pauwels will be hoping for better luck in Pau in the second Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS. Borković, in a Target Competition Hyundai Elantra N, will also be hoping to get his title fight back on track this weekend after a relatively subdued performance in Portugal, not helped by that DNF in the second race.

Two maximum scores in Portimão mean that Coronel leads the Diamond Trophy from Rubén Fernández and last year’s winner, Viktor Davidovski. Britain’s Isaac Smith, in a Volcano Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS, is third in the Drivers’ championship and is the leading Rookie after the opening weekend, while his teammate Lewis Brown will be keen to show the kind of pace that saw him win the opening round of this year’s TCR UK championship. Similarly, Nicola Baldan and Mikael Karlsson in the two Aggressive Team Italia Hyundai Elantra cars and Viktor Andersson in the MA:GP Lynk & Co 03 will all be out to show that the Portimão event was just a warm-up for the rest of the season.

In addition to the TCR Europe full-season entrants, there are five French drivers on the entry list. The CDRS team has three cars – two CUPRA León cars for Olivier López (Team CDRS) and Julien Nougaret (Cap Racing by CDRS) and a first-generation Audi RS 3 LMS for Christian Philippon (Espace Racing with CDRS) – while there is a Team Leal Compétition Volkswagen Golf GTI for Michel Leal and finally another Audi, run by Comtoyou Racing, for Pau Touring Car hero Eric Cayrolle. All five must be hoping that home advantage will deliver them some decent results over the weekend.

Pau, however, has the potential to be anything but predictable. Although the Pau Grand Prix has been a festival of single-seater racing since the 1930s, Touring Cars have also played a starring role in the event, with the FIA WTCC and, in 2022, the WTCR and ETCR taking to the streets. The briefest of searches on YouTube will throw up a number of well-known incidents from previous years and, with Autosport magazine declaring the Circuit de Pau Ville one of the top ten street circuits in the world, this weekend has the potential to deliver two thrilling TCR Europe races in front of packed grandstands.