VW win WRC championship in their first year

[btimbit]

Two rounds left, but they clinched it with the most recent win

http://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/volkswagen-wins-wrc-title-first-year/

[DeleriousZ]

Every, single, thing, red bull touches turns to gold. Seriously.

[xnvy]

Impressive but not super surprising. Factory backed effort that has proven itself numerous times at Le Mans, best driver lineup, not to mention Loeb only ran 4 rallies this season, so while it wasn't expected that VW would win, I'd say there was a good chance it was going to happen.

IMHO, biggest surprise was Thierry Neuville.

[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by DeleriousZ
Every, single, thing, red bull touches turns to gold. Seriously.

I'd argue that they are simply the best at picking existing opportunities that will allow them to obtain the best marketing value.

What I mean by this, is while Red Bull was obviously throwing in the cashola, VW meant BUSINESS when they wanted to win at the WRC. Two years of development work, building off of Skoda's S2000 efforts (and prior WRC work), hiring the best of the best a season before any real racing happened, on and on it goes. The effort VW put into this program is staggering. Only problem with that is that it is hard to level the playing field when somebody shows up with cubic truckloads of money (Ford basically pulled out this year).

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Not totally surprising considering all of the major factory teams (excluding Citroen) have already pulled out of WRC. As a race series, it's sadly a shell of what it used to be.