WRC Testing

[Andre Oliveira]

https://www.facebook.com/pg/dariobte...86095881467283

Mikkelsen today

[stefanvv]

Seriously? After 9 years of complete domination by Loeb/Citroen (apart from the two Manufacturer titles of Ford) and 4 years of endless wins and titles by Ogier/VW the best thing that could happen was VW getting out. I don't care how great the Polo would have been I'm just glad to FINALLY seeing some competition again after 13 agonisingly long years. Imagine Ogier, Latvala and Mikkelsen in another superior car. That not happening is the reason why I got enthusiastic about the WRC again.

Serious competition ahead of us - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDL9sy0KLuM

[Andre Oliveira]

https://www.facebook.com/pg/angelvil...43210665931749

Ogier

[Rally Power]

Totally agree. However, the more I see the new cars the more I miss the Polo 2017. It was in another dimension. When I was last year watching Meeke testing with the C3, I had a talk with him. He had the same feelings, he expressed that no driver had a chance against that car.
After watching the new cars in a rally and testing, I searched to see again a video recorded the same day I saw the Polo for the first and last time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqlg...ature=youtu.be. As I said, miles away from the other ones.

Yep, the Polo looked strong and it’d be great to still have VW at WRC (5 manus is always better than 4) but I’m not that certain that Ogier and VW would still be dominating the series, at least the way they did in previous years. Hyundai progress was pretty visible during ’16, with Neuville matching Ogier pace (and points) at the second part of the season. The new i20, that seems to be currently the best car around, certainly would challenge the ’17 Polo and once Tanak and the Fiesta are pretty close to Neuville it’s not hard to imagine that things would be pretty animated. And there’s also the C3; clearly faster than the others (maybe including the Polo) when Meeke manages to stay in control of it!

We’ll never know how it’d actually be, but with so many fantastic stuff happening nowadays in WRC there’s little time to remember VW!

Vido of Hanninen’s test in Toumilo by D10M: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYU34FwL9YA

[dimviii]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7WVh4AY9W/

[Fast Eddie WRC]

craigbreen: The definition of teamwork! Close to 11pm and my mechanics and engineers are still hard at work after leaving the hotel at 06:30 this morning. This is where the hard hours are put in, and it's an honour to work with each and every one of them! We had a really nice test day in Sardinia today, and we are feeling ready for Portugal next week.

[Kielder]

Although you are posting strong reasons which I partially agree with, it will never be better to keep a car like that in a garage than rallying. By the same token, Ogier staying at home would generate more enthusiasm on the WRC. Even more, gymnastic fans were fortunate when Loeb chose rallying instead of that Olympic sport. I still can remember those epic gymnastic events between 2004 and 2012 which he could have turned into a dictatorship...

[Rally Power]

Although you are posting strong reasons which I partially agree with, it will never be better to keep a car like that in a garage than rallying.

Amen. And the worst part is to see that the knowledge and experience VW has acquired during WRC years is now helping to grow a rival motorsport series…but don’t forget that it wasn’t the fans, the organizers and officials and neither the competitors that made VW pull out: the blame is on a small bunch of top VW executives that weren’t passionate about our sport, probably because they never care to really understand it.

[Meekefan]

Some shots from Ogier testing at Covas last sunday.















Please, find more on https://www.facebook.com/Photography...9508334199301/

[Watson]

Although you are posting strong reasons which I partially agree with, it will never be better to keep a car like that in a garage than rallying. By the same token, Ogier staying at home would generate more enthusiasm on the WRC.

I fully understand your frustration with this beast never seeing the light of day, but i think it doesn't outweigh the pros.

Ogier is now with the underdog team and isn't that great? He's having to properly fight. So many drivers are capable of winning rallies now and Ogier and Neuville will have an epic battle for the title, so do Hyundai and M-Sport. I'm on the edge of my seat and I love it.

the blame is on a small bunch of top VW executives that weren’t passionate about our sport, probably because they never care to really understand it.

Hardly, the blame is on VW being frauds who developped an emissions cheating software for their roadcars (the lot of them VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda) and they got caught. As a result of being sued and due to the millions in fines they had to pay they cut back on several motorsport actions (VW WRC, Audi LMS) because 1) they couldn't really afford it anymore, 2) their public image is shattered and a couple of motorsport programmes won't sway the broad public's opinion on them.