WRC: VW Prepared To Sacrifice To Save Competitors

[OverTake.gg]

Volkswagen WRC has agreed to freeze the development of the next iteration of it's Polo R WRC in order to keep competitors in the running.

The three factory teams, Volkswagen, M-Sport and Citroen, are coming to the end of the homologation cycle, and were to enter new cars next year.

Production of an entirely new car costs upwards of £3m, which would be the end of M-Sport given their current financial standing.

VW could simply develop a new car, and follow through with the FIA's rules, with one of it's main competitors knocked out of the running.

However, in order to keep it's competitors racing, Volkswagen has been lobbying the FIA in order to maintain the current seasons cars for next year.

Volkswagen principal Jost Capito said "We talked about what is best for the future and what's the best to keep the level of entries up in the championship.

"And after talking about all of this, we found that the best way is to stay with the cars we have for this year."

Capito put the next-gen Polo R WRC development on hold, pushing the planned debut back to 2015.

"It's fair to say," said Capito, "that we have taken away some of our potential performance advantage for the good of the sport."

"We are very grateful for this," said Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport Managing Director. "As you can imagine for the likes of myself and Yves [Matton, Citroen team principal], it's a real positive move.

"We know we can still be competitive next year without having to spend millions on development.

"This has kept the championship open and, to be honest, we couldn't have done a new homologation unless Ford had come back; we wouldn't have been in position to spend the millions needed.

"OK, Volkswagen has still got the best two, if not three, drivers in the sport, but at least, after Jost's proposal, we know that the cars are going to be on a level playing field for next season."

Given how the industry has become more and more corporate over the years, it's good to see that even the largest teams in the sport will make sacrifices to keep competition rife. Even if those sacrifices could mean huge wads of money down the drain.

Image: F1-Site

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[Alex Millar]

i think the issue is that VW are in my opinion the biggest manufacturer in the sport, yeah granted you see a lot of Citroen's knocking around but i don't believe they are on the same level as VW. That only really leaves M-Sport as another potential competitor and they don't have nearly enough money to challenge VW or Citroen at the moment. I believe that this is bad for Motorsport in general but the WRC is in desperate need of more competition if it wants to revive its popularity

 

[Aidan Keranen]

I see this in two ways. First, good form from VW to realise the sport is bigger than the competitors.
but that leads on to my second view as well. they aren't idiots. no doubt they realise that if they bury the competition now, in 2 years there might not be a WRC to run anymore.
but ultimately I see this as a good thing, the WRC is quite crippled and needs support, not a single team dominating completely