MOTORSPORT: Volkswagen in WRC for the long term

As its sister brands Audi and Porsche prepare to battle each other – and Toyota – in the Le Mans 24-Hour sports car classic in France this weekend, Volkswagen has made a massive commitment to the struggling World Rally Championship it has dominated for almost 18 months.

VW will stay in the WRC for another five years beyond this season, giving its engineers the green light to build a next-generation World Rally Car for 2017.

Its commitment to the WRC comes amid big concerns in the sport about the championship's exposure and the rebirth of rallycross with its media-friendly sprints on gravel and tarmac and privateer teams already fielding VWs in major new series in Europe and America.

While some of rallying's powerbrokers – including former world champion co-driver, six-time world champion team boss for Subaru and head of the Prodrive conglomerate, David Richards – see the internet as potentially the best "vehicle" for media coverage of the WRC, VW made plain it wants better TV coverage.

"A prerequisite for the success of the championship is a format optimised for TV, in order to make rallying even more attractive for the general public," VW rally team boss Jost Capito said.

"We call upon the promoters [Germany's sportsman media group and Austria's Red Bull Media House] to work together with the manufacturers to significantly increase the media coverage for the series."

France's Peugeot, one of the most successful manufacturers in rallying up to a decade ago, recently made known it had no interest in returning to the WRC because it "fails to have good visibility" and its sporting director, Bruno Famin, questioned whether VW would remain in it much longer.

VW's existing commitment to the series for production-based 1.6-litre, four-cylinder, turbocharged four-wheel-drive cars competing on gravel, snow, ice and tarmac across four continents – including Australia at NSW's Coffs Harbour in mid-September – was until the end of next year, but now it has stretched that to the end of 2019.

Seeking a new challenge after three straight Dakar Rally marathon victories in South America with its diesel Touareg up to 2011, the German marque won the manufacturer and driver (and co-driver) championships in its first season in the WRC with its Polo R last year, taking victory in 10 of the 13 rounds.

This season it has won all six rounds so far, with its French world champion Sebastien Ogier 33 points ahead of its Finnish driver Jari-Matti Latvala.

Despite the assertion barely two weeks ago by Peugeot's Famin that "Volkswagen is not too happy with the return that comes from the WRC", VW said in announcing its long-term commitment that it saw the championship as the ideal platform for demonstrating technical expertise and sportiness.

"The WRC is a very good platform for Volkswagen to demonstrate the efficiency, dynamics and reliability of its cars to a global public," said Dr Heinz-Jakob Neusser, VW's director of technical development and responsible for the brand's motorsport program.

"The series is more closely oriented towards the technology used in the latest production vehicles than any other world championship, and based on the kind of real conditions that our customers all over the world experience on a daily basis.

"Furthermore, millions of people are passionate about this spectacular sport.

"The close interaction between the production and motorsport development departments at Volkswagen, the sporting contest with our direct rivals in various markets [primarily Citroen, Ford and Hyundai, with Toyota contemplating a return in 2017], and the huge potential for marketing in the media led to our decision to commit to a long-term involvement in the WRC."

VW team boss Capito said the company had "never implemented a long-term motorsport program on this scale before".

"This faith is a huge motivation for our entire team not to rest on its laurels for a single second, but to continue to show the same degree of passion, determination and commitment to ensure we remain successful in the WRC," Capito said.