The Volkswagen Polo R WRC , the winning car of last year's FIA WRC ( World Rally Championship ), is now even better to face the challenges of the 2014 season . Volkswagen has refined the details of its championship car ahead of the new season, which begins with the classic and extremely demanding Rallye Monte Carlo (January 14-19).
The factory team will defend the championship with the 315bhp WRC competition car, which has been undergoing continuous development since its debut nearly twelve months ago. An attractive new design with gray and blue stripes gives the car a suitably dynamic look. First impressions say that this Polo R WRC is even more dynamic. The trained all-wheel drive machine won ten out of 13 rallies last season and brought all three world championship titles to Wolfsburg.
"If you're not moving forward in motorsports, it's taking a step back," says director of racing Jost Capito . "When it comes to technical development, you simply cannot slack off for a single second . Although we won laurels in 2013, we certainly did not sleep on them. Manufacturers in the WRC World Championship have agreed that no new WRC competition cars will be homologated for the 2014 season. Despite this, we tried to make the most of the remaining options. Since our debut twelve months ago, we have perfected many of the detailed aspects of the 2014 Polo R WRC competition car. Everyone in the team can't wait to see how we stack up against strong competition from Citroën and Ford , as well as our new rival Hyundai .”
The strict rules mean that the 2014 version of the Polo R WRC is a compilation of the detailed improvements implemented on the car from 2013. In addition to the new design, the WRC from Wolfsburg has also been refined under the hood . After the last season, the team could use ten so-called jokers , which allowed it to change individual components compared to the state in the previously submitted homologation documents. The priority of the engineers was, in addition to the optimization of the chassis components and new variants of the powertrain tuning, increasing the stability of the car . Volkswagen used one joker to install a new software version for the on-board electronic system.
In addition to great performance, the Polo R WRC's reliability was the main advantage in 2013. In 13 World Championship events – three with two cars and ten with three cars – the factory team did not have to deal with any engine failure . There was only one technical fault: a loose connector in the electronic system .
Source: Volkswagen
