WRC 2015 season

[zonk]

They see me Rollin' they hatin'

[MadMatt]

I thought about sharing that pic too but I would be accused of being anti-VW

Teams are testing for Mexico, but in Spain:

[zonk]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_gbJ-reZ-g[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oYcYmCz4Tk[/youtube]

[bdr529]

WRC Rally Mexico: Tanak okay after crashing into a lake

M-Sport's Ott Tanak and co-driver Ragio Molder are both okay after crashing into a lake in the first proper stage of Rally Mexico.

Tanak's Fiesta RS WRC reportedly left the road in the first third of the 9.91 km Los Mexicanos 1 test. Tanak and Molder both managed to scramble free, before the car sank
http://www.crash.net/wrc/news/215309/1/ ... exico.html

Kris Meeke, Hayden Paddon and Robert Kubica have also had incidents during the morning - in Meeke and Kubica's cases while battling for the rally lead

[itix]

Hi! Tought I'd introduce myself here since I'll probably spend more time here than I will in the main forums, hahahaha!
27 year old swede who has been following WRC closely since the rally bug bit me in 1997 (never missed a rally I think). Follow F1 sporadically and has done so since 2003ish (but had a big gap between after Montoya quit (2006?) and 2012).

I'll throw a question in for good measure. Does anyone know when the new i20 is due? I believe I read Portugal somewhere. I place a lot of hope in that one and I so hope that Hyundai has plowed a lot of money into the suspension. I believe the only threats we will see to Ogier this season are Thierry Neuville and Kubica (who is seriously over achieving in the Msport in terms of speed... which show too often when he goes off the road).

Cheers everyone

[MadMatt]

Welcome here, great to have another rally fan onboard.

I don't know about the new Hyundai, but they already had a quite big engine evo for Mexico I believe. As you probably know they are using Reiger, and I know back when they hired Thierry, they took one of Reiger's good specialist onboard as well. That guy is building dampers "on the spot" from the driver's comment, that's quite impressive (saw it myself)!

[itix]

No I did not actually know they built them on the spot from driver input (in connection with data I am sure, we all know that drivers aren't the most reliable source of info always haha). That's hugely impressive. I read that you did not want to be branded anti VW, but I have nothing against it. I so hope their stupid dominance ends soon.

It would be awesome if they could take the fight to VW. Even if Ogier will most probably win anyway I am sure that they have the capacity to be good 2nd placers. And if Latvala keeps up the poor ability to stay on the road they might even snatch the manufacturers title

Here, fellow rally fan, have some morning entertainment as reward for sharing this interesting piece of info
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/happy- ... 1690631646

[MadMatt]

To my knowledge, it is very rare there is a damper guy building damper for a driver. You usually have more than enough to play with clicks and springs for example, before going that deep.

On another subject, M-Sport is testing, on a different location than Graystoke. Not far off tho, I remember seeing this scenery often!

[itix]

For some reason my reply did show up a long while afterwards... weird

[itix]

Right, attempt 2 at replying.

I feel I should revise my statement about VW. I don't mind them being in the sport and what they achieve is amazing, but it is getting boring and I do have an issue with the VW empire. I am just waiting for the VW branded tie-fighters and darth WInterkorn to start breathing heavily. VW's wrc branch is doing an amazing job, but some of my distaste for the VW group spills over on their WRC branch.

I preferred Citroen when they were dominating actually.

Also it is a shame M-sport is doing so badly. They are the oldest remaining entry in the sport and they have always cared greatly for the sport. Hope their new evolution of the Fiesta is better. I saw that pic on their facebook page

I have some questions for you matt (oh ain't it wonderful to have someone with technical insight in rallying at your disposal hahaha)! Do you know what dampers VW are using? I'd assume it is some homebrew because they seem very protective around it with the way they almost desperately tried to get their wheel and suspension back that Latvala lost at Mexico (that someone promptly brought with them home).

These modern cars with transverse engine layout, do they sport center diffs or is the front diff acting as a "center diff combined with front diff"?

[MadMatt]

VW's dampers supplier is Sachs! For sure they must have a very close relationship since Sachs doesn't provide WRC dampers to anybody else. Regarding your second question, there is no center diff (it is in the regulations). You do have a front diff inside the gearbox casing, and a rear diff!

[itix]

Right, like I thought then. A three way diff in the front and a rear diff.

If the 206 and the Xsara and all of those had center diffs back in the days (my assumption provided that Subaru, if I have understood it correctly, had a center differential and front diff plus transfer shaft built into the gearbox... they would sort of need one to be competitive) how did they solve that with a transverse layout? Hmm, that's an interesting one

Ok, last one I promise hahaha. How do they handle turbine stall? Is it true that they don't run dump valves and that this is what caused the chirp in the olden days? Surely that has to be a wives tale considering there is a boost limit and you'f go over that pretty heavily before you stalled the turbine (also poor turbine wheel that would have to stall several times during every corner). Surely there must be a dump valve. If so, does that dump on the air side or on the exhaust side? And to what? Exhaust? Free air? I know about the anti lag system to keep the pressure up but the rest no (sorry to be a pain in the posterior, it is not every day you come across someone who has worked in a WRC team )

[MadMatt]

The air charge system is complex on a WRC machine. You have multiple valves that control the way the turbo spins (and produces pressure) by controlling the wastegate and the boost valves (fresh air system) when off throttle. They all work together, but I would imagine there are slight variations depending on the manufacturer.

[itix]

Discovered this a bit late I guess but here's a tweet from Kevin Abbring: https://twitter.com/KevinAbbring/status ... 5806540800 The body shell still looks like the same as the old one... guess it is a test mule with an old body shell on it because it would make sense from a marketing perspective to use the new body shell when the new car is launched.

The new body shell certainly does look a lot better and I DO hope the Alzenau boys and girls have poked their Korean colleges with the "rally wisdom stick" during the development process.

Hyundai's new i20 coupe

EDIT: Nope, hang on. Thanks to the lovely italian rally media (thank god I speak italian) there are some "spy" shots of it




Those are definitely the new headlamps. The taillights are still the old ones though. A half breed mule then. I still don't mind because the "eyes on stalks" headlights of the current model is by far the worst bit of it.

[itix]

I just read that Hyundai has sold two WRC cars to a newly formed italian team for entry in the italian WRC class car championship.

That is odd to me, is this a common practice among Works teams? I know Msport and Citroen build cars for privateers but they are also Private teams... it is odd that a full on built from the ground up works team would do the same. I applaud it of course and I wish all manufacturers did!