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After the Polo R WRC comes the Polo GTI R5. With the World Rally Car version of the Polo, the Volkswagen works team won four FIA World Rally Championship titles between 2013 and 2016. The production-based successor model was developed according to category R5 regulations and is intended exclusively for customer racing

Volkswagen Motorsport presented the new rally car to customers shortly before homologation. Representatives of the privateer teams visited the headquarters in Hannover, where they experienced the 200 kW (272 PS) four-wheel drive together with test driver Dieter Depping (D) at a test centre in nearby Sulingen. “The Polo GTI R5 has completed around 9,000 test kilometres 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 feedback from this introductory session was extremely positive,” added Juliane Gründl, head of sales at Volkswagen Motorsport. “Almost all the teams already have definite plans in place for using the car in the 2019 rally season and cannot wait to get their hands on their Polo GTI R5.”

Competitive debut at WRC event in Spain at the end of October

The homologation of the Polo GTI R5 is planned for 01 October 2018. Before being licensed for motorsport, the Polo GTI R5 will have completed around 10,000 test kilometres 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 and former race engineer of World Rally Champion Sébastien Ogier.

Before the first customer cars are delivered, further test drives and the competitive debut are scheduled. At the Rally Spain from 25 to 28 October 2018, the Polo R5 GTI will take on its rivals in the WRC2 class at world championship level for the first time. And for the Volkswagen Motorsport team, it will be a mini comeback after the final race in Australia 2016, since Volkswagen Motorsport will be taking care of the car at the debut. “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.”

Article source: www.volkswagen.co.uk

For the second year in a row, the GTI “Coming Home” meet will take place in Wolfsburg. GTI fans and visitors will be able to access the event area in the Volkswagen Arena and the Autostadt from 10 am on 1 September 2018.

To bridge the gap until the next GTI meet in Wörthersee (Austria) in May 2019, Volkswagen is once again inviting fans to join the company in Wolfsburg at the end of the summer. In addition to a varied supporting programme for the whole family, a very special GTI procession is also planned as a highlight. Fans can drive their own GTIs through the Volkswagen plant where the first Golf GTI rolled off the production line in 1976.

“Last year’s event received incredible feedback from the fans. It was really exciting!” says Jürgen Stackmann, Member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for Sales. “The GTI family has an amazing fan base all over the world, some of whom will be travelling to our main plant. We can’t wait to say a big hello to our GTI fans!”

Volkswagen is also hosting the German première of the Golf GTI TCR Concept1. The vehicle was first presented at Wörthersee in May. With 290 PS and a top speed of 264 km/h, the concept vehicle is one of the fastest GTIs.

The 500 kW (680 PS) I.D. R Pikes Peak, Volkswagen’s first purely electric racing car, will also be showcased at GTI Coming Home Wolfsburg 2018.

Volkswagen has already set two records with the electric racing car, which was constructed in just eight months. On 24 June, Romain Dumas (F) not only improved the previous record for electric racing cars at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb 2018, but also set a new all-time record for the world-famous hill climb at 7:57.148 minutes. Just three weeks later, the 40-year-old Frenchman drove the I.D. R Pikes Peak to set a new electric vehicle record of 43.86 seconds at the Goodwood Festival of Speed – 3.48 seconds faster than the previous record set in 2013.

The event area opens at 10:00 am with the programme scheduled to start with the official welcome on the main stage of the AOK Arena at 11:00 am.

J.P Performance will be hosting the proceedings on stage. The day’s agenda includes events such as a motorcade and fan drives. To keep fans fed and watered, refreshments will be available from Wörthersee-style food trucks. This year’s event will also be partnered by the Autostadt, who will be presenting the Autostadt Tuning Award for customised Volkswagens. If you would like to take part, simply drive through the Photo Drive in the short-stay car park from 9:00 am. Professional photographers will be on hand to take shots of private vehicles alongside sporty icons such as the GTI W12-6502 Concept2. The well-known tuning expert Lina van de Mars will be hosting the photo shoot and introducing cars and their owners.

Participants will be given a link where they can download a copy of their photos. Any photos uploaded to Instagram with the hashtag #autostadttuningaward will also be entered into the Autostadt competition. The winner will be the photo with the most likes.

The main prize is a weekend at the Autostadt with an action-packed programme: the highlights include a meet & greet with Lina van de Mars and a trip in a Golf MkI GTI from the ZeitHaus collection.

Historic Golf and Beetle buses will travel between the Volkswagen Arena and the Autostadt, providing visitors access to both areas. The Autostadt event arena will open at 9:00 am and close at 4:00 pm.

The GTI procession through the plant that is planned for the afternoon will pass through the east gate via the central route down Mittelstrasse to Südstrasse, past the Brand Tower and on to the Kraftwerk. Vehicles will be required to register on site to take part in the procession, which will be open to up to 250 vehicles. If there are more people interested than places available, the time of registration on site will be used as the determining factor for participation.

Parking spaces right next to the stadium will be available exclusively for GTI drivers. Further will be signposted in the vicinity of the arena. Parking will be free and will be available on a “first come, first served” basis.

Article source: www.volkswagen.co.uk

The Beetle Sunshine Tour is the largest meeting of the Beetle, New Beetle and Käfer community in Europe. For the first time, the festival in 2018 will not take place in Lübeck, but in Wolfsburg and thereby in the heart of the Volkswagen world. For good reason, because the New Beetle presented in 1998 is celebrating its 20th birthday and because it was the impetus for the first Beetle Sunshine Tour in 2004. The organisers have therefore moved the meeting to the Autostadt without further ado. That's why the motto is "Beetle Sunshine Tour to Wolfsburg". It starts on 8 September at 10:00 a.m. Highlight: a convoy of all participating Beetles, New Beetles and Käfer right through the centre of the Volkswagen plant.

The Beetle Sunshine Tour has its origins in the Lübeck district of Travemünde, directly on the Baltic Sea. Gaby Kraft, the inventor and organiser of the Beetle Sunshine Tour, lives there in Schleswig-Holstein. Fourteen years ago she initiated the first tour with 60 participating vehicles. Gaby Kraft: "It was quite easy. I bought myself a Beetle back then. I asked myself: I can't be the only one who's enthusiastic about this car. There must be others. So let's try to organise a meeting up here in the north." And that's how it happened.

Although it remained informal, the Beetle Sunshine Tour has long since taken on another dimension. In 2017, there were more than 700 registered Beetles, New Beetles and Käfer and around 4,000 participants. The organisers limited this enormous number of vehicles to 200 cars in 2018, as otherwise the convoy would have exceeded the organisational limits of the planned plant procession. In less than three hours after the online announcement of the Beetle Sunshine Tour 2018, all of the available starting places for this year's tour were allocated.

But as always with the Beetle Sunshine Tour, the same applies in 2018: All fans of the water-cooled or air-cooled cult-status vehicles and the Volkswagen brand are welcome to visit the festival grounds right next to Autostadt Wolfsburg. Just follow the parking guidance system, park your car and make a pilgrimage to the site. Participants and visitors mingle and make up the Beetle, New Beetle and Käfer community. With their attractive design and classless status, all three generations of this Volkswagen appeal to people who share a cosmopolitan and positive attitude to life. So if you have a desire to see lots of Beetles and nice people, you should travel to Wolfsburg on Saturday, 8 September. The focus there will be on the birthday child, the New Beetle. 

The series production version was presented to the world by Volkswagen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January 1998. And this was the beginning of Beetlemania – from a former means of transport during ‘the economic miracle’ to a timeless lifestyle icon.

Article source: www.volkswagen-newsroom.com

For a fully-electric racing car like the Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak, the weight of the battery is especially important: it is the heaviest individual component – and each increase in weight has a detrimental effect on the car’s performance. It was logical for the Volkswagen Motorsport engineers to keep the batteries as small and light as possible in the record-breaking car. In addition to the sophisticated, weight-saving lithium-ion design, they are relying on technology that is already implemented in numerous electrically-driven production models: recuperation.

In a conventionally-driven car, much of the energy generated by braking is converted into heat and is lost. In an electric car, this energy flows back into the battery packs. The I.D. R Pikes Peak itself produces part of the electrical energy required for the two engines, which generate 500 kW (680 PS). “This allowed us to reduce the dimensions of the batteries and keep the vehicle weight, with driver, well under 1,100 kilograms,” explains Piotr Wrzuszczak, Head of Research and Development Concepts at Volkswagen Motorsport.

However, the Volkswagen Motorsport engineers had not yet had any experience with recuperation. They were supported by the technical departments for e-mobility at the parent company in Wolfsburg and at the Volkswagen Preproduction Center (VSC) in Brunswick. “The cooperation with our colleagues from series development was a big help and saved us a lot of time,” says Wrzuszczak.

Golf GTI TCR touring car as development agent 

To make the learning process easier, Volkswagen Motorsport first installed an electric drivetrain in a Golf GTI TCR from touring car racing. This experimental vehicle was used a mobile laboratory at the Volkswagen test site in Ehra-Lessien. The focus was on recuperation. “As we were not able to test on the original circuit at Pikes Peak, we compared the data harvested from the converted TCR race car with the data produced in the simulator at Volkswagen Motorsport. We had programmed the whole track as a model in the computer,” explains Wrzuszczak. 

The simulations were used to answer an important question: what portion of the energy required during the race will be produced by the on-board systems in the I.D. R Pikes Peak? A high percentage requires large generators, while big batteries need a correspondingly lower percentage – both options mean extra weight on board. “We finally settled on a value of 20 per cent as ideal,” recalls Wrzuszczak.

Recuperation must not affect the driving experience 

The engineers also worked on another challenge in the simulator and during test drives. Regardless of whether it’s a race car or a production vehicle: the driver should barely notice the recuperation process and it should not have any effect on braking. The balance between the mechanical brake and the braking effect of the electric motors, which work as generators during deceleration, is decisive. 

“The interplay between recuperation and braking is controlled by the on-board computer in the I.D. R Pikes Peak,” explains Wrzuszczak. Racing cars have far more extreme objectives than production cars, and the software is programmed much more aggressively. However, the production car also has to deliver the best braking feeling for the driver, make use of coasting phases and ensure that the battery recharged effectively without surges.

“One factor to be taken into account was limiting recuperation with a fully-charged battery right after the start,” adds Wrzuszczak. Energy management towards the end of the 19.99-kilometre race was also a complex task: with a racing car that uses a combustion engine, weight concerns mean that crossing the line with a near-empty tank is ideal. “We had a different task with the I.D. R Pikes Peak,” says Wrzuszczak. “Batteries that have nearly completely discharged do not perform as well. That is why our strategy was to avoid the charge level dropping below 30 per cent, even just before the finish line.” 

This plan worked perfectly at the “96th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb” on 24 June 2018: the I.D. R Pikes Peak delivered a great performance for Volkswagen driver Romain Dumas during the final kilometres leading up to the 4,302-metre summit – vital for the new track record of 7:57.148 minutes. 

Recording record times on the racetrack is not the objective for the vehicles in the I.D. Family, which Volkswagen will be bringing to market from 2020. The recuperation strategy applied during the record-breaking performance of the I.D. R Pikes Peak provided plenty of data for the development of the first fully-electrically driven production cars for this brand.

Article source: www.volkswagen-newsroom.com