Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross enters the 2016 Red Bull Global Rallycross championship this weekend, May 21-22, in Phoenix, USA, with high expectations, aiming to match the successes of their 2015 campaign which included a series-high six race wins, the driver’s championship for Scott Speed, and overall team accolades for the season.
Tanner Foust and Scott Speed will team up together for a third straight season, forming one of the strongest pairings in the sport, “Scott and I complement each other really well,” explained Tanner Foust during pre-season testing. “Our different backgrounds, drawing on experience from so many diverse driving disciplines, allow us to help one another out in ways we couldn’t if we both came from the same sort of racing.”
The Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross team is a collaboration between Indianapolis-based Andretti Autosport and Volkswagen Motorsport in Hannover, Germany.
“The VARX team is an international effort unlike anything else in Global Rallycross,” said Foust. “We spend a lot of time working with Volkswagen Motorsport and benefit from the championship-winning experience and development of their World Rally Championship program. It’s an advantage that’s helped us a great deal in our own work with the Beetle GRC, speeding us along the learning curve with a new car.”
This is the second full-season for the 560 horsepower Volkswagen Beetle GRC, a platform that claimed six victories, six pole positions, and eight other podium finishes in 2015. “At the start of last season, we didn’t know a whole lot about the car, so we made a lot of educated guesses about what would work,” said Speed.
Speed will be searching to repeat his championship-winning form of 2015, defending a title he clinched with a third-place finish in the season finale at Las Vegas. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to go back-to back with championships, so I’m looking forward to the challenge,” he said with a smile. “I’m grateful to both Volkswagen and Andretti for the opportunity they’ve given me by putting me in this car with the best team on the grid.”
