FIA Puts Final Nail in Polo WRC’s Coffin

The long saga of the 2017 Volkswagen Polo R is finally over. The FIA has ruled not to homologate the car, which means that it won’t be allowed to race in any rallies this season.

The decision comes following two weeks of meetings between the World Rally Championship’s governing body and Volkswagen Motorsport. After a meeting in Monaco proved that some manufacturers, namely Hyundai, were uneasy about homologating the Polo—a move that would have been unusual given the circumstances—the FIA has decided not to approve the car for competition.

“Following customer inquiries, we asked the FIA for a waiver of the homologation of the 2017 Volkswagen Polo World Rally Car, with the purpose being to rent it out to private drivers and teams,” said Sven Smeets, director of Volkswagen Motorsports. “It now turns out that this is not possible under the current WRC regulations.”

With one round of the WRC season already complete, and no team able to rent the car for the full season anyway, the decision has little impact on this season’s drivers’ or teams’ championships. That said, it does affect at least one driver’s season, Andreas Mikkelsen.

Mikkelsen drove for VW last season and finished the season in third place, but hoping for a seat in privately run Polo, failed to secure himself a ride with another manufacturer, as his two teammates did. Despite that, Mikkelsen had not given up hope and intended to race the Polo in a handful of rallies this season.

Now, Mikkelsen will have to make other plans for this season and may find his way back into the seat of a Skoda in WRC2.

[source: Autosport]

The post FIA Puts Final Nail in Polo WRC’s Coffin appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2kDShHX
via IFTTT

Comments

You can't scam VW by buying a dirty diesel now and still get full payout

Filed under: Government/Legal , Green , Volkswagen , Diesel VW's lawyers have naturally put in a clause that will prevent anyone from buying a known dirty TDI from getting the full buyout amount from the OEM. Continue reading You can't scam VW by buying a dirty diesel now and still get full payout You can't scam VW by buying a dirty diesel now and still get full payout originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2016 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments from Autoblog Volkswagen http://ift.tt/297SxtR

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier. The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow. While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something . To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it. Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait. So with this in mind, we lined our G...

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog