We showed you the great looking Ford Fiesta RS WRC yesterday, and the car that it has to beat in next year’s World Rally Championship is this, the Citroen DS3 WRC.
If you’ve been on another planet, Citroen has won five Manufacturer’s World Champion titles and six Driver & Co-driver titles with Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena, and the Sebs (the other DS3 WRC will be driven by Sébastien Ogier) will be banking on this new machine to continue their dominance of the sport. In the current WRC season, with three rounds to go, Loeb leads the championship from Ogier and looks set for his seventh title. The guy is unbeatable.
Using the shell of their DS3 premium hatchback, Citroen’s new car replaces the C4 WRC and conforms to the new rules set by the FIA. More compact than its predecessor, the DS3 WRC uses a 300 hp 1.6-litre direct-injection turbocharged engine tuned by Citroen Racing. The 4WD transmission incorporates a six-speed sequential gearbox and front/rear mechanical differentials.
By the way, FIA’s new rules for next season was designed to limit the budgets required to compete in WRC. It bans expensive materials such as titanium and carbon fibre, while standardising parts like the turbocharger and limiting the changes that can be made to the car throughout the season.
Gallery after the jump.
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Wow! 300hp from a 1.6 engine…. amazing….
turbocharged summore, race prep summore….good engine, good reliability
coz turbocharge it get 300hp
in f1 way before 1.5 can get 400-600hp..if no mistaken la
WRC car more importance having high torque then high hp like F1 because of 4WD and a lot of slow corner in gravel. F1 only 2WD and go round amd round and round.
not only turbocharged make 300hp…
all internal part are titanum,light n strong…
No BMW had a 1.5l engine in the 1980’s that produced 1500bhp.
Danny, working up so late?
not going any booz tonite?
It’s quite chilly here in Paris, so it’s hot chocolate and not cold beer for me!
obviously turbocharged..
Dear All,
1.6cc and 300HP?
Sounds impossible, but they did it ! Nice…
Common la… it’s not that the engine have to last 200,000km. Trading durability for performance, this what they do in motor sports.
Oh yea.. it’s not 1.6cc.. kekeke… 1.6cc is damn small engine for ants, i’ll b amaze if there is something like tat that can produce 300hp.
will proton take part in WRC? next year they have 1.6 campro turbo….
IRC got, WRC, well if got big teams want to buy their car, they can… Or they could go in themselves.
tiny awesome :-)
Looks like small cars are the in thing now. Fiesta, DS3, Mini……
formula one 1.5ltr turbo engines in the 80’s made over 1000hp in qualifying trim.
the last 3.0ltr N/A V10 engines in 2005 were making over 900hp.
Its not like that they cant reach the hp figures mentioned (1000hp) but because of regulations, they have to comply with the 300hp limit. Before they had this limit however, we had group B rally cars which produce up to 500-600hp in cars roughly the size of the DS3. You had the Peugeot 205 T16, Lancia has the S4. But all this came to an end with the death of Henri Toivonen. Group B was scrapped. Group A came along and it was good because it force the manufacturers to build road going models of their racing cars. We had the Celica GT Four, Delta Intergrale, galant VR4, Legacy RS.
Group B – while the cars are spectacular, they were too dangerous to race leading to the ban. But they are legends nonetheless. Unknown to most, Toyota was already working on a Group B-spec Toyota MR2, before the end of the Group B era.
In my opinion, Group A era in the early 90s was the best, big number of entrants (Lancia, Toyota, Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Nissan) plus the Group A cars were much closer to the real production cars, unlike the prototypes of WRC cars….
The question is, will this new Citroen WRC car, becomes another competition crushing car (and ultimately causing utter boredom in the WRC championship lately)? I hope not!
it’s good to see even WRC is heading towards efficiency.
forget the wasteful lot F1!
Pray harder that new and older manufacturers will join the fray. Cheers!
impressive car …
apparently got 2engine configuration for the manufacturer to choose for their WRCar…
1.6T
and
2.0N/A(s2000 spec was going to wrc)
so big possibility and chance for proton to show what are they made of…(it not like previously where our flying singh carry proton name on mitsu car)
but of course their cash was questionable…..
Anyone knows a aftermarket in singapore which can help tune my docile like just looks ds3?