Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 rally car revealed
Rallying’s dominant force returns to the WRC with tier-two R5 carVolkswagen won the World Rally Championship’s top trophies for four straight years before walking away at the end of last year, and now the German giant is back, but not as an outright contender.
Instead, Volkswagen has developed a Polo GTI R5 customer car to run in the WRC2 category -- thus providing an image boost for the Polo GTI road car it will launch in Europe in December.
Unlike its sister brand, Skoda, which competes with the Fabia R5, Volkswagen has steadfastly refused to enter a full works team of Polo GTI R5s, but will send engineers, technicians and mechanics to all rounds of the championship to support customer teams.
Volkswagen Motorsport director Sven Smeets said the Polo GTI R5 would start testing in December and the first cars would be in the hands of customer rally teams in the second half of 2018.
"With the Polo GTI R5 we are hoping to transfer our expertise from four WRC titles to customer racing successfully, and offer a first-class racing machine for countless rally championships from national series to the WRC,” Smeets said in a statement.
"Before the first race outing next year, we will subject the Polo GTI R5 to rigorous testing to make sure it is prepared for the extremely varied track conditions around the world."
Volkswagen’s Polo claimed the double (the manufacturer’s and driver’s titles) in the 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 World Rally Championships, lead by engineer Gerard-Jan de Jongh and technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison, both of whom remained at Volkswagen Motorsport to develop the Polo GTI R5.
Besides its Skoda siblings, the Polo GTI R5 will face WRC2 R5 competition from Malcolm Wilson’s numerically dominant Ford Fiestas, Citroen’s DS3, Peugeot’s 208 T16 and upcoming variants of the Toyota Yaris and Proton Iriz.
The 2016 WRC2 championship was won by Finland’s Esapekka Lappi, driving a Skoda Fabia R5. Lappi seamlessly joined the major leagues this year and quickly confirmed his talent by winning Rally Finland and finishing fourth on the Rally d’Italia for the Toyota factory team.
Other WRC2 graduates include include Toyota works driver Juho Hanninen, Citroen star Craig Breen, veteran Nasser Al-Attiyah and ex-Formula 1 star Robert Kubica.
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
