The FIA World Touring Car Championship will welcome a Brazilian team and driver for the next race meeting – the WTCC HBSC Race of Brazil that will take place in Curitiba on July 1st and 2nd. Tekprom, a young team that was only created in 2003 but has already proven highly competitive in achieving important results in national races, has entered a former WTCC Alfa Romeo 156 which was built in Italy by N.technology.

Earlier this month, during the last round of the 2006 FIA World Touring Car Championship at Oschersleben, the N.technology-run Alfa Romeo 156s showed a welcome return to form aided by a new weight break and fresh development work carried out on the venerable racer. Emphasising the real transformation in fortunes Augusto Farfus battled for the overall lead in the second race, and Alfa Romeo are now heading to South America optimistic of continuing this revival. The proven strength of the Tekprom Alfa 156 and the team's long experience with the car will provide a useful benchmark for N.technology's own engineers.

Last year the the Tekprom team participated with the Alfa 156 in three rounds of the Brazilian Endurance championship in Santa Cruz do Sul, São Paulo and Londrina, claiming two victories and one second place, which gave it second position in the series' overall final classification. At the beginning of the current season the Tekprom Alfa Romeo 156, driven by Uberto Molo, Claudio Capparelli and Istvan Minach, comfortably won the MMSTCC (Super Touring) class in the 1000 kilometre-long Mil Milhas de Interlagos, Brazil's most important international endurance race, by five clear laps and after having started from pole position, a result which emphasised the durability of the car.

23-year old Lucas Molo will take the wheel of the Alfa Romeo for the FIA World Touring Car Championship event. He built considerable experience when he began racing in the Italian Formula 3 championship.
 

Since he came back to Brazil he has raced in the Renault Clio Cup and claimed some outstanding results in endurance races such as the 1000 Km de Brasília and the Mil Milhas de Interlagos. In the latter race he finished 11th overall in this year's edition  alongside Maurício Neves and Nelson Siva Jr. In 2004 and 2005 Molo won the Endurance national title driving Ferrari cars (a 360 Modena and a 550 Maranello) run by Tekprom. Only the second coloured driver in the history of Brazilian motor sport, Molo is considered as one of its finest emerging talents.

After the Oschersleben race ten days ago the entire field was packed up to be shipped to Brazil. Championship promoter KSO, with support from Hapag-Lloyd and MSK had already been planning the logistics of the journey for months. The long trip to Curitiba began on the Sunday evening, immediately after the race, when 27 containers were loaded with 24 out of the 25 WTCC cars, 200 tonnes of spares and over 1,500 tyres. From Oschersleben the convoy drove to the German port of Hamburg, where the containers were loaded aboard the vessel NYK Espirito which set sail on 8th June. After a two-week voyage, on 21st June the vessel will have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach its penultimate destination of Paranagua in Brazil. The final leg of the journey will then be a 100 km drive to the circuit of Curitiba where the precious cargo is expected on 24th of June. There the containers will be unloaded and the teams will prepare for the FIA WTCC's first overseas race of the season, on July 2nd.