Volkswagen Motorsport At Rally Australia

 

 

The WRC championship consists of thirteen rallies, ten of the rallies are based in Europe and the remaining three are help in Mexico, Argentina and Australia

 

 

For the Rally Australia the Volkswagen Motorsport team involves 63 people, 12 less than they would have at a European based event.

 

Rally legend and co-driver to Carlos Sainz, Luis Moya gave CarShowroom.com.au a guided tour around the team facilities in the service park at the Coates Hire Rally Australia.

 

The logistics of getting the team to rally Australia is impressive!  Volkswagen Motorsport has two set-ups, a seven truck set-up for European rallies and a container based for sea freight and air freight set-up, which travels to the three ‘fly away’ rallies in Mexico, Argentina and Australia.

 

 

At the start of season the team set-up two separate operations, one for the European rallies that uses 11 trucks and one for the fly away rallies. For the fly away rallies Volkswagen Motorsport use seven shipping containers that are shipped off at the start of the season with everything they will need in Argentina a, Mexico and Australia.  Basically that is everything expect for the cars and spare parts that are limited in numbers. 

 

 

The three Polo R WRCs are fitted with special tyres and rims, which allows them in to fit in a specially constructed airfreight container.  Airfreighting the cars and rare spares allows the team to be fully prepared at all rallies and helps reduce overall costs.

 

Just like Formula 1 the WRC is trying to cut costs.  Luis Moya told CarShowroom that during the early nineties a team needed to have 1,000 tyres per car for the four-day event.  At Rally Australia the cars were assigned 24 tyres for the whole even - that’s a fair saving.  Tyres are supplied by French manufacturer Michelin at each rally, Volkswagen Motorsport need only supply the rims.  Depending on the rally the cars can use different rims normally its 17-inch alloys for asphalt tyres, 15-inch rims for ultra tough gravel tyres, and special wheel rims for the narrow snow tyres with studs that are used in the Rally Sweden.

 

With rallies being held in all parts of the world a lack of power supply can sometimes be an issue, therefore the teams travel with the own supply.  Incase of a power outage the team can run two 12.5kW backup generators that can be used to keep all essential systems running.

 

Working for a rally team does have its perks as is seen my many as one of the best jobs in the world. However being part of a rally team is by no means an easy one, lots of time away from home and family can be difficult.  Team members that attend all rallies will clock-up more than 100,000 kilometres in travel, or almost two and half trips around the globe.