Back to Monte Carlo for Red Bull-backed Volkswagen
Monte Carlo may be the oldest event on the calendar, but it marks a brand new start for Volkswagen.
VW Monte Carlo test
© Volkswagen Media
However, it’s really a bit of a return because not only did Volkswagen compete in the WRC in the late 1980s with the MkII Golf, but they actually launched their latest campaign in the Principality less than a month ago.
From the beginning, it was clear that this team is intending to go about things slightly differently. In the current age of financial austerity, new rally car launches now tend to consist of a cup of coffee and a sandwich, while an engineer whips a second-hand curtain off a car parked in the corner of a warehouse. Everybody claps politely, asks the engineer about viscous couplings to make a bit of desultory conversation and then goes home.
Instead, Volkswagen flew the entire world’s media to Monte Carlo in early December, put them up in the Monte Carlo Bay hotel (which is usually home to visiting rock stars) and then took over Casino Square to drive their new Polo R WRC over an elaborately reconstructed start ramp, before treating everyone to dinner in the Hotel de Paris, where the hardest decision was deciding which vintage of champagne to drink.
The Polo R WRC
© Volkswagen Media
It’s fair to say that the bar has been well and truly raised, in terms of corporate hospitality at least. But while the motoring purists would argue that these things are irrelevant to performance, they serve as a useful barometer of how much money the manufacturer in question has at their disposal and therefore how seriously they are taking the whole project. Of course, a bottomless budget doesn’t guarantee success – look at Toyota in Formula One, who were reckoned to be burning through about $250 million per year in their heyday – but it all certainly helps.
When Volkswagen came to the Dakar for the first time in 2004, for instance, they re-wrote all the rules. Their attention to detail was such that they even serviced in specially-made tents that were originally designed for military field hospitals, with a unique vacuum seal to keep dust out and wounds sterile. These tents made a re-appearance last year, when the Volkswagen team was competing with Skoda Fabia S2000 cars as it prepared the new Polo.
It left everyone thinking – “if this is just what the practice team is like, how’s it going to be when they get properly serious with a real car?” This year, we finally get to find out. And VW might actually end up needing those military hospital tents to keep the wounds of their opposition nice and fresh…