Austria’s STARD Motorsport has unveiled the K:Force Kia Cee’d TCR. Based on a road going Kia Cee´d and equipped with the latest Hyundai/ Kia 2.0 L ‘Theta II’-series turbocharged, direct-injection engine, STARD’s interpretation of the 5dr base car also features a bespoke carbon fibre aerodynamic body kit and has been developed for the TCR International series.
“As in any other of our projects one target is clearly set above all others: To develop a race winning car,” explained STARD’s CEO, Michael Sakowicz. “We have proven our know how and the competitiveness of entirely STARD developed race cars in past rally, recent touringcar and recent world rallycross supercar projects and plan to confirm and underline this with our Kia TCR project. We at STARD are exceptionally passionate about motorsport which is why we work hard to achieve the best possible. Always.”
Developed using the latest CAE technology, the K:FORCE Kia cee´d TCR is one of the newest cars to built to TCR specification, with STARD stating it paid ‘careful consideration’ to 2017’s technical regulations. Among others these include an increase of engine performance to 350 HP, as well as the possibility to homologate 2 different sequential gearboxes to avoid delivery problems and a 3 year homologation freeze becoming effective from 2017.
As any other TCR machine the K:FORCE Kia cee´d TCR is based on a front wheel driven C-segment road car. The most powerful produced version, the ‘Kia cee´d GT’ is powered by a 1.6 liter engine, in its version, STARD has taken advantage of the regulation´s possibility to apply another engine from the same manufacturer group up to 2.0L.
“Not only is the applied ‘Theta II’ engine matching the maximum allowed 2.0L displacement in TCR, being one of the newest developments from the Hyundai/Kia R&D center in Namyang, it clearly shows the influence of the manufacturers recent top motorsport involvements such as the WRC project, resulting in increased suitability for high performance and resultingly motorsport applications,” continued Sakowicz. “Coming from rallycross technology, where our 2.0L engines develop more than 600hp and 900Nm of torque and taking into account different regulation, we are extremely satisfied with the performance and driveability of our TCR engine, especially because it was one of the key technical targets in our development process.”
The car also features a variety of solutions such as a full MoTeC motorsport engine control- and data logging system, motorsport wiring loom with military-grade connectors, and what STARD refers to as a ‘higher amount of sophisticated motorsport components instead of modified OEM solutions’.
STARD states that the development stage is finalised and the cars have completed already over 3000kms of testing, not counting separate dyno and bench tests for subsystems as for example the engine. The temporary homologation is in the final approval stage while the testing process is continuing on full pace and will be continued until the end of the year.
