A breakdown is always a setback for any team or manufacturer immersed in the WRC. The search for the absolute reliability is a chimera, but reduce to a minimum their numbers is key to achieving success. In Volkswagen Motorsport know it, and so has been illustrated by a Polo R WRC that in addition to being very fast has always enjoyed great reliability. However, the brand lives moments of uneasiness the whole time they can’t detect the cause that provoked the fault in the gearbox of the Volkswagen Polo R WRC of Jari-Matti Latvala in the last Rally of Germany.
Just seven kilometers away competitive -to the margin of the shakedown – played Jari-Matti Latvala in Germany before suffering a fault in its gearbox. Even though the technicians of the brand repaired the fault and was able to complete the rally with the same gearbox, the firm will not be able to mount a new unit until after the Tour de Corse as the technical regulations of the FIA forced to use the same gearbox in two rallies on consecutive. In the case of Jari-Matti Latvala, his cycle in relation to this mechanical element includes the German event and the test on the French island.
The big problem for Volkswagen Motorsport is that one’s own technical regulation prevents opening the faulty unit -to be sealed – and thus be able to investigate the mistake he had made, so that the concern in the brand grows to the possibility of re-repeating the same failure. Jari-Matti Latvala will have to compete with some intrigue in this aspect, almost praying that they don’t repeat the problem that prevented him from climbing gear both with paddles behind the wheel as the lever of an emergency. From the brand appeal to be a sporadic problem and not an endemic evil that can be repeated.
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