VW Motorsport has sold 15 models of its Polo GTI R5 – developed according to category R5 regulations and intended exclusively for customer racing – to customers in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Paraguay, Portugal and Sweden.
Volkswagen Motorsport presented its newest rally car to customers shortly before homologation. Representatives of the privateer teams visited the headquarters in Hannover, Germany, where they experienced the 272pd four-wheel drive racer together with test driver Dieter Depping at a test center in nearby Sulingen.
“The Polo GTI R5 has completed around 9,000 test kilometers to date, half of which were on gravel and half on asphalt,” explained Volkswagen Motorsport director Sven Smeets. “The entire development team has worked hard and delivered a first-class result, which has been confirmed by the initial reactions of customers.”
The homologation of the Polo GTI R5 is planned for October 1, 2018. Before being licensed for motorsport, the Polo GTI R5 will have completed around 10,000 test kilometers in total.
In addition to the WRC2 category of the FIA World Rally Championship, the new customer racing rally car will also be in action in interregional championships such as the FIA European Rally Championship and numerous national championships.
“When defining the specification, we took great care to ensure that it would be easy for professional privateer teams to master the technical support of the Polo GTI R5,” said Jan- Gerard de Jongh, technical project manager for the Polo GTI R5.
Before the first customer cars are delivered, further test drives and the competitive debut are scheduled. At the Rally Spain from October 25-28, 2018, the Polo R5 GTI will take on its rivals in the WRC2 class at world championship level for the first time.
“We will compete at the Rally Spain with two cars from our own team,” said Smeets. “The aim is to demonstrate the competitiveness of the new Polo GTI R5 at the highest level and on different surfaces.”
