Half of the gap to the best closed from last year
This weekend, Volvo Polestar did their third consecutive evaluation race in the World Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch over three seasons. The objective was to evaluate the progress of the ethanol powered DRIVe C30 race car against the best in the world. And the car continues to show its potential.
"Brands Hatch offers a solid bench mark possibility for us. It is twice as long as a normal Swedish track like Falkenberg and it has a lot of high speed corners which is found on several other WTCC tracks. We can conclude that we are progressing in the right direction. Last season we were trailing the quickest cars by 0.6 seconds here. This year we are just 0.3 seconds off. This is very encouraging as WTCC is increasingly becoming an option for us in the future" says Derek Crabb, Motorsport Director at Volvo Car Corporation.
Volvo and Polestar are mid season in this years Swedish Touring Car Championship and top the team and driver's standings. Despite being involved in a high speed crash in the last STCC race a week ago, driver Robert Dahlgren and the team decided to follow its plan and enter in this weekends WTCC race. Dahlgren finished the first heat as twelfth but was denied racing in the second heat when the water pipe broke on his C30 during line up. Still, Dahlgren is happy with the weekend.
"We arrived here with a car set up perfectly for short and tight STCC tracks, complete opposite to Brands, but we were still able to adjust settings and improve our lap time here with over a second in just four track sessions. I feel there is a lot of potential in this car" concludes Dahlgren.
Volvo Polestar's next race is at Karlskoga in STCC on August 14, but the team will be back doing a second WTCC evaluation race this year at Okayama in Japan on October 31.
