World Rally Championship royalty sampled Volkswagen’s new-for-2013 Polo R WRC when Carlos Sainz, known affectionately as The King, took part in the German make’s test in Spain recently.
Sainz, a two-time WRC champion and an advisor to Volkswagen, completed initial testing of the prototype Polo back in November. During a recent test in his homeland, the 49-year-old accompanied Volkswagen’s lead driver Sebastien Ogier during a number of runs in the latest version of the car before getting behind the wheel himself.
“During my active days [in the WRC] I drove thousands of test kilometres and hope to be able to support Volkswagen with my experience,” said Sainz. “I have a lot of confidence in the squad and the Polo R WRC will no doubt be a big hit. But we mustn’t forget that 2013 will be the Polo’s first year in the WRC whereas the competition will have been active there for many years.”
Volkswagen Motorsport chief Kris Nissen said: “The test in Spain served to simulate the roughest WRC sections and to take the car to its load and stress limits. Particularly chassis components such as the hub carriers, dampers and suspension components were successfully tested in the limit range. Carlos Sainz and Sebastien Ogier are working together extremely well forming a very good combination. They respect each other without any rivalry and are purposefully driving the project forwards. Our next step will be to run further tests on [Tarmac] in order to complete our specifications book and to then check off each item on the list.”
Ogier and Sainz completed approximately 700 trouble-free kilometres during the test held on winding gravel tracks near Almeria in the south of Spain. Sainz accompanied the French ace during day three.
“For us, it was mainly about driving this car on as many kilometres as possible on very hard ground,” said Ogier. “In parallel, we made a few minor changes to the [set-up] in order to pick up speed step by step.”