PoloDriver

Following last month’s successful outing at Rally GB, the Volkswagen Motorsport team once again had put in a strong showing at Rally France on 4-7 October. Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia took another Super 2000 (S2000) class win, while team mates Andreas Mikkelsen and Ola Fløene scored fastest times on six of the rally’s stages. The pair of Škoda Fabias took positions 11 and 12 in the overall finishing classifications.

The Volkswagen drivers fought fiercely close battles on Thursday’s tarmac stages in Strasbourg, where a wet surface made choosing the right tyres tricky. By the end of the seven stages, Ogier and Mikkelsen were just five seconds apart. They continued their close duel on Saturday’s dry stages until the young Norwegian struggled with an engine misfire due to a defective injector, losing more than two minutes to Ogier.

Last year’s winner and Frenchman Ogier assessed the event positively: ‘It was a good home rally for us. This year, we weren’t able to battle for overall victory because it was about gathering as much experience as possible. The conditions were changeable but good to drive on the whole,’ commented the 29 year-old. More than 300,000 spectators lined the roads in Alsace, to watch the Volkswagen Motorsport team gather crucial data for the 2013 season, when the concern will be fielding the newly-developed 300bhp Polo R WRC rally car.

‘I’m very happy with the entire squad. We finished this rally with a strong performance in class and smooth operations in service as planned. The changeable weather was probably anything but inviting for the large crowd of enthusiastic spectators but good practice for us,’ said Volkswagen Motorsport Director Jost Capito. ‘Congratulations to Sébastien Loeb and the Citroën team on winning the World Champion’s title for a record ninth time. We’re very much looking forward to competing against this strong squad next year with the Polo R WRC.’