Is Volkswagen's rally withdrawal all that it seems?

ONE bombshell follows another…

Though Audi pulling out of the WEC at the end of this season stunned some, it was really no great surprise. Conversely, the announcement of Volkswagen’s withdrawal from the World Rally Championship after the final round in Australia this month caught everyone on the hop, including its star drivers and team boss.

To give such, almost rude, short notice of the withdrawals in both cases smacks of either real need to save euros for the massive dieselgate emissions scandal payouts, or reactive boardroom decisions to take the brands into different directions in terms of their powertrains.

Or maybe both.

And, by any measure, it’s a huge disappointment to lose Audi from the WEC and VW from the WRC.

But no brands are permanent fixtures in any motor sporting theatre, perhaps with the exception of Ferrari in Formula One. And even Ferrari makes periodic threats to leave unless it gets its own way on regulatory matters and financial incentives.

The VW announcement of its WRC exit mentions brand realignment of its motor sport programme, focussing on new technologies and customer sport.

“At the same time, Volkswagen is going to focus more on customer racing. As well as the Golf GTI TCR on the circuit track and the Beetle GRC in rallycross, we also want to offer customers top products and will develop a new Polo according to R5 regulations.”

The announcement dances carefully around the diesel engine manipulation disgrace and the need to find many billions of euros and dollars to pay fines to authorities and for rectification to customer cars.

Don’t hold your breath.

VW has never confirmed its budget for the WRC but insiders have indicated it was north of 100 million euros annually. Helped by a large contribution from sponsor Red Bull.

The abrupt withdrawal left four-time world champion Ogier and his VW team-mates Jari-Matti Latvala and Andreas Mikkelsen without drives for 2017.

While no doubt their contracts will be honoured (financially), they want to compete next year, and Ogier in particular is being wooed and chased by other manufacturer teams in the 2017 championship.

Ford M-Sports’ Malcolm Wilson admits he would love to sign Ogier, the class act in world rallying, and that talks have already begun. This could be bad news for either Ott Tanak and Eric Camilli, who had been expected to drive with the main M-Sport squad, with Elfyn Evans in the sister DMACK entry.

Matton told Autosport he would be happy to chat to Ogier, a former Citroen driver, although “there’s no question about changing my driver line-up for next season”.

The VW exit is a setback for the WRC which next year features a new technical rules package with significantly faster and more dramatic-looking cars.

It will be a battle between series regulars Hyundai and M-Sport (Ford) plus returning championship giants Citroen and Toyota.

Finns Esapekka Lappi and Juho Hanninen were expected to be the 2017 factory Toyota Yaris WRC drivers for team boss Tommi Makinen. But that was before the drivers’ market was unexpectedly flooded…