This weekend the first round of China Touring Car Championship will be held at the Shanghai International Circuit. Ahead of that, we look at the key regulation changes for this season.

The main structural change is that the Super Production Turbo-charged class and the Super Production Naturally-aspired class will be merged, and will be known as the Super Production Class in the 2012 CTCC season.

The technical regulations for this years Super Production class will come straight from the FIA's Super 2000 Article 263, with restrictions to the sizes of the aerodynamic body kits and rear wing, but will extend the size of engine air restrictors from 32mm to 33mm, and turbo boost limit from 2.4 bar to 2.5 bar for the turbocharged engines. In order to attract more teams switching to turbocharged cars, they are allowed to import turbocharged engines which are eligible to FIA's Article 263 - namely 1.6 turbos engines as introduced in 2011. They will also be allowed to and change their engines between each round or before qualifying, whilst the teams using naturally aspirated engines are only allowed to change engines after two rounds.

The points system has also been changed this season, with only the first eight placed finishers scored in the first race of the weekend (Using the system 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1). In the second race, the top ten finishers will score, with the points allocated as 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, which is based on the BTCC system which was used up until last season, instead of the standard FIA championship system which was used by the CTCC last year in both classes.
The entry list for the 2012 China Touring Car Championship season will be released shortly.