ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The Škoda Octavia WRC is a competition version of the Škoda Octavia, designed to participate in the Rally World Championship, in which he competed from 1999 to mid-2003. The last official appearance took place at the 2003 Cyprus Rally, Germany was replaced by Škoda Fabia WRC.

Description and history

On the wave of the successes obtained in the minor categories with the Škoda Favorit and Škoda Felicia, the house of Mladá Boleslav decided to try in the top category making a car for the WRC.

The technicians, evaluated the FIA regulations for the WRC category, addressed their choice on Octavia which, at the time, was the only car compatible with the requirements of the federation.

The final design, although characterized by much more generous dimensions than those of the most agile competitors (it was in fact more than 4511 mm long and 1770 mm wide), was an integral traction car driven by a 2 litres four cylinders 20 valves, supercharged by a turbocharger, capable of 300CV and 500Nm torque to 3250 rpm. They also hijacked the balance that saw the needle stop at 1230kg, the minimum expected for the category.

Also interesting is the bicycle based on a MacPherson scheme with gas shock absorbers and stabilizers adjustable directly from the cabin. The braking compartment consisted of 366mm ventilated discs to the front coupled with 6 water-cooled pumping pliers, and 300mm discs to the rear combined with 4 pumping pliers.

Season 1999
After months of intensive testing, he presented himself to the starting strips by deploying two cars: the first Armin Schwarz, in couple with Manfred Hiemer; the second entrusted, alternatively, to the Czechs Pavel Sibera, navigated by Petr Gross, or Emil Triner, flanked by Milos Hulka.

The beginning of the season was not the best and saw the Octavia retire in the first three appointments; only in Greece, at the Rally of the Acropolis, both cars arrived at the finish line closing in the twelfth and thirteenth position.

The season continued without further joys until the last event on the calendar, the Rally of Great Britain, where the Belgian strong driver Bruno Thiry closed in fourth absolute position detached of more than three and a half minutes from the third ranked Harri Rovanperä.

Season 2000
Skoda again enrolled two cars in the rally world championship, confirmed the German Schwarz, the second guide was entrusted to the thirty-four-year Spanish Luis Climent Asensio, navigated by the compatriot Alex Romanì.

The new millennium did not reserve special satisfactions to the Czech squadron that suffered four retreats and obtained, as best result, the fifth place conquered by the German at the Rally of the Acropolis.

Škoda Octavia WRC EVO2

To try to improve the unsatisfactory results collected in the two previous seasons, Škoda engineers developed an evolution of their creature: