The Big One Bites the Dust: Volkswagen Out of WRC After 2016

[Lorenzo Bonder]

The 4x and current World Rally Championship Constructors champion, Volkswagen announced the team won't compete anymore after the 2016 Season.

The Volkswagen Dieselgate catastrophe continues and fatally claims another victim. After Audi announced their withdrawl from WEC last week, now the German factory announced last Wednesday (Nov. 2nd) that their WRC rally program will be pulled at the end of the current 2016 season.

The announcement is made after Sébastien Ogier claimed his fourth consecutive WRC Drivers Championship with his #1 VW Polo R RC car. With the dooming announcement from Volkswagen, that leaves the French driver as the hottest free agent in the market, as Ogier is considered the spiritual successor of the 9x WRC Champion Sébastien Loeb, with his four titles as a way to prove Ogier's point. Also, factory drivers Jari-Matti Latvala and Andreas Mikkelsen will be unemployed after the end of the season.

To prove in numbers the dominance that the German factory had in the championship, during the "short" four year span that the brand took part of WRC (2013 - 2016), they won an amazing total of 42 out of 51 stages, winning the Constructors Championship four times and Ogier respectively winning the Drivers Championship also four times.

Frank Welsch, VW's Techincal Director, stated that "Volkswagen is going through tough challenges", those clearly related to the Dieselgate scandal and he also mentioned that "the current expansion of the eletrification of their vehicle lineup, the company will focus their efforts on developing new important technologies for the future and that the Volkswagen Motorsport will be restructured while this effort is ongoing".

Note that Welsch mentioned a restructure of the Motorsport brand, not brand termination, meaning that their vehicles will still supplying racing cars for independent rally and rallycross clients as well as concentrating on a customer TCR touring car programme with the Golf GTI.

How do you feel about this blowing exit? Do you think it was expected? Let us know in the comments below.

 

[Lorenzo Bonder]

The pun reference on the title was brought you by Queen.

"Other worldy messages yesterday, relevant today."

 

[Hannu Karesola]

Of course it is not great thing for WRC but because of VW departure we will finally see some interesting rallying next year. It has been quite dull during their domination tbh.

 

[Blimey]

Last Wednesday was November 2nd.

 

[Patrik Marek]

oh boy this is starting to be serious

 

[Grand Tourist]

I believe that VW should be prohibited from motorsports the next ten years as punishment for their vulgar deception of their loyal customers and environmental parties. Never seen such blunt arrogance and deceiving, falsifying bastard car company for nice stats and a "green" image. From clean to dirty in under 10 secs flat....VW has called this one on themselves. No pitty from me, besides for their loyal emplyees who believed to work for a good clean company.

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

Wow. Sounds like there will be a huge battle from teams to sign Oiger, Latvala and Mikklesen.

M-Sport are looking to sign Oiger and Citroen are open to talks with Oiger. I sense that Latvala could end up with Toyota and Mikklesen, well I have no idea where he could end up

I feel bad for the three drivers. VW pulling out at the last minute sucks. They didn't get a chance to sort out drives for next season before VW decided to pull the plug

 

[k_badam]

Well, i hope they stay on till the end of 2017, they put a lot of effort into the 2017 car!

 

[Jozsusz]

I eon't miss them, i'm happy thye're out

 

[TobiasR]

I hope their cars remain in WRC for customers. No reason to let them go to waste.

Edit: if I could read I would've known the answer

 

[Celestiale]

Apparently there are rumours, that Red Bull might enter the WRC, and take over the whole VW team including their 2017 car, and go forward from there, in a similar manner then Msport does it with Ford. One can only hope, the more manufacturers, the better. I think the Citroen will be pretty much on par with the VW, with the Hyundai not too much behind anymore..so i think the title race could also be very interesting with the VW in it..

 

[budlix]

Pity. Their car (team) was ultimate, they have developed new spec car which will be thrown out (they could give it for free to some privateers ). But also will be nice to see closer battles for podiums and not just wait if still perfect Ogier (respect) will make a mistake.

 

[budlix]

Apparently there are rumours, that Red Bull might enter the WRC, and take over the whole VW team including their 2017 car

If so, then, I think, it would be similar dominancy as VW did. New manufacturers are welcome, but I would preffer narrowed financial (etc.) limits for factory teams and privateers wchich could raise the competition.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Apparently there are rumours, that Red Bull might enter the WRC, and take over the whole VW team including their 2017 car, and go forward from there, in a similar manner then Msport does it with Ford. One can only hope, the more manufacturers, the better. I think the Citroen will be pretty much on par with the VW, with the Hyundai not too much behind anymore..so i think the title race could also be very interesting with the VW in it..

That would a massive conflict of interest (there kinda are already with them being a major sponsor of VW), as Red Bull are the promoter of WRC as well.
Also, VW have already said that they will not sell, or loan out the 2017 cars either.
Then I have more faith(0.01% chance) in the wishful "Skoda to WRC" thinking, as VW will go down to WRC-2 and R5 in 2018, and that's a class where Skoda are dominating atm.

 

[gamer19]

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/volkswagen-confirms-wrc-exit.127876/

Or I'm not so popular on RD or....
actually, there's no another "or".

 

[Tim Meuris]

I believe that VW should be prohibited from motorsports the next ten years as punishment for their vulgar deception of their loyal customers and environmental parties. Never seen such blunt arrogance and deceiving, falsifying bastard car company for nice stats and a "green" image. From clean to dirty in under 10 secs flat....VW has called this one on themselves. No pitty from me, besides for their loyal emplyees who believed to work for a good clean company.

Can't say it much better. Never been a VWfan mostly cause of their dull carmodels but after dieselgate I lost every respect for this company. Sad thing is that nobody cares while I find that when you let people think they are paying for a green car while in fact vw betrays their faith with software that was purposely built for deceiving emission measurements. The best selling car in Europe is again the (ever so dull) vw golf... People just want to be deceived...

I hope they suffer bigtime for this, paying superhigh fines and loosing millions of customers, but I'm sure it won't go down like this and vw will probably come back stronger (and duller) than ever...

 

[Grand Tourist]

Can't say it much better. Never been a VWfan mostly cause of their dull carmodels but after dieselgate I lost every respect for this company. Sad thing is that nobody cares while I find that when you let people think they are paying for a green car while in fact vw betrays their faith with software that was purposely built for deceiving emission measurements. The best selling car in Europe is again the (ever so dull) vw golf... People just want to be deceived...

I hope they suffer bigtime for this, paying superhigh fines and loosing millions of customers, but I'm sure it won't go down like this and vw will probably come back stronger (and duller) than ever...

They are forced to buy back cars from 500,000 USA customers for about 15,000,000,000€ and received a fine of 4,700,000,000€ too. That's a good start. Shareholders also claim 8,100,000,000€ for betraying their trust.
Europe however fails to react as a global governing body and are being rather passive because Merkel is for sure using that German power in the EU to discourage them to fine VW the same way in Europe as it would mean the "end of VW".
Not that I hold anything against Germany , FYI.

 

[Hal Burns]

I can hardly wait for the Formula E version of the WRC...........

 

[robnitro]

VW being dirty is a misleading argument. I used to have a VW diesel and was part of TDIclub. The california air resources board kept tightening the noose around anything internal combustion, despite stopping the leading cause of smog years ago. VOCs were the problem (unburned vapors from gasoline and light hydrocarbons), but CARB went overboard about NOx and particulates when it comes to diesels. Oddly enough, the gas direct injection engines make more particulates and have a harder time than diesels, but as a new technology were given less strict standards. Ask a BMW or VW gas direct injection owner about carboned up valves!

What VW did was what tuners did to increase economy. Advance timing and reduce intake clogging EGR rate. Mileage going up means less pollution in the long run.

But no, the US/CARB testing has nothing to do with real world fuel use. A 6000 lb SUV with a v8 that is set for low efficiency tuning is "less polluting" in their books than a 3000 lb car with a turbo gas or diesel inline 4. Meanwhile in euro standards, that v8 has a hard time passing. That's why we have hybrid SUVs here that get 18 mpg considered as great, while Europe has the same SUV with a smaller yet powerful diesel getting 25 mpg or gas getting 20 (ford started that with ecoboost though) that they cannot bring here!

Last joke about what VW did. Well, in the TDIclub we helped other diesels too, such as mercedes benz and BMW. Turns out they too have cheated in similar ways to pass CARB for the few diesels they bring here. The only difference is that VW is a big player in the USA compared to Benz/BMW.

 

[Lorenzo Bonder]

True fact:

VW nightmare didn't even get to stage 3. They are merely entering stage 2 of chaos. All of 'em cheat, in a manner of speaking, what matters is what you do or not that could you get caught or not.