Škoda has won its first FIA World Rally Championship title in its history, after the Red Bull Škoda Fabia S2000 team of Juho Hänninen/Mikko Markkula (Finland) secured victory on the last rally of this year’s Super 2000 World Rally Championship (SWRC) at the RACC Rally de España in Spain last weekend. They finished first in the S2000 class and tenth overall.
How times change. A couple of decades ago Škoda was one of those long-in-the-tooth East European auto manufacturers that had become the butt of too many jokes. True, the company had a history dating back to the 1890s and it had been racing its cars for over a century.
Then Volkswagen bought the Czech company in 2000 and now sales of the rejuvenated brand are increasing around the world. Škoda has now garnered a strong reputation for reliability and customer satisfaction.
The S2000 WRC class is for 2-liter 4WD rally cars that are based on smaller models such as the Ford Fiesta and will form the basis for WRC cars in the future. The S2000 cars were competing for the first time this year and although they are slower than the full-on WRC cars they are much faster than the Production WRC cars. They are also less expensive to build, so the FIA is hoping this will encourage more manufacturers to compete in the WRC.
The success of the Škoda team bodes well for Volkswagen Motorsport as it will be campaigning a full-on WRC team in 2013 with the VW Polo WRC, which is based off the Škoda Fabia S2000 rally car. The Fabia has been used by VW this year as it prepares for its new rally team to take on the might of the Citroen, Ford and Mini works teams.
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