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New engine supplier for the FIA ETRC?

New engine supplier for the FIA ETRC?

14. March 2015A new engine manufacturer could step in to fill the vacuum that’s resulted from the official withdrawal of Renault and MAN from the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. The change of the rules to allow a free choice of engine from this season makes this a distinctly possible prospect.
There are indications that Cummins, the world’s largest independent manufacturer of high-speed diesel engines, is girding itself for a decisive play in the British national championship maybe even the ETRC, as a supplier of race power in the MAN mould.
Cummins has announced that it is developing a Euro VI version of its new ISG “world” engine, presently built in China by Beijing Foton Cummins Engine Company in displacements of 10.5 and 11.8 litres.
It’s clear that no European OEM would be an obvious customer for this engine. However, both Foton and Tata, which absolutely dominates the Indian market, have articulated expansionary ambitions that don’t exclude Europe.
Foton, for one, would need approval from its partner Daimler for any prospective market entry — and that’s anything but a certainty. Tata, on the other hand, is completely independent.
On its own, Tata’s relative inexperience in developing trucks and services for the high expectation levels of the European market would appear to be an insurmountable disadvantage. But the Indian giant does have a secret weapon for its assault on Fortress Europe. A formidable one. Cummins’ ISG12.
For sure, the engine will have to be beefed up for Euro VI, and especially to meet the durability requirements of the demanding European market. The best way to do that would be to go racing.
Cummins already supplies the Dutch Ginaf Rally Power team with 13 litre ISZ engines, which in rally spec deliver 900 hp and 3,500 Nm of peak torque.
While the larger ISZ is built tough for reliable performance in the extreme conditions that obtain in the Dakar, the compact ISG is significantly lighter and much more suited for circuit racing of the European sort. The adaptive architecture of this Worldwide Common Platform (Cummins terminology) allows the engines to be race-configured for individual customers trucks at far lower expense than the OEMs’ proprietary engines.
Cummins can boast an impeccable pedigree in motorsport. The present ISL9, installed in the T1 Prima race trucks in India is actually an evolution of the 8.3 litre engine with which Ford won the Fórmula Truck title in Brazil in 2004. From 2006 onwards the ISC electronic version powered the VW Constellation to five driver’s and six constructor’s titles in this ultra-competitive series, against a field consisting of trucks with 12 litre engines! At the end of 2012 MAN then replaced the Cummins in the VW Constellation with its own mighty D26.
With Cummins’ wealth of race experience, the ISG, built by Beijing Foton Cummins in China and race-engineered by Cummins in India would certainly be a force to reckon with in European truck racing in seasons to come, potentially rivalling the dominance of MAN’s D2676 RT.

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New engine supplier for the FIA ETRC?