Word in the paddock at last week’s Rally Australia season finale was that Skoda owners Volkswagen had already decided to halt the Czech firm’s WRC program, after a mostly disappointing 2005 season which saw the Fabia WRC score just 21 points.
Skoda has been involved in the sport’s top level since 1999, and its pullout would come at the worst-possible time, as Citroen (in a one-year sabbatical) and Peugeot also won’t come back next year, placing the WRC in a position of perhaps suffering a 50-percent slash in manufacturer involvement, from six to just three: Ford, Subaru and Mitsubishi, although the latter also has yet to officially confirm its permanence for ’06...
But according to this week’s Autosport magazine, WRC commercial boss David Richards will engage in a series of meeting with top VW executives in an attempt to convince them to stay. His trump card is the talent of veteran Colin McRae, who ran as high as second in Australia before his mechanics were timed out in an attempt to change his clutch, just three stages from the end.
"If they put this car in the hands of a competitive private team with a fraction of the resources Skoda has had, the car could be challenging for a podium regularly - especially with Colin McRae driving," Richards believes.
McRae himself outlined that he would be available, provided enough resources are at hand to further develop the car.
"I haven’t heard anything about the plans for the coming season" the Scot admitted. "[But] if the right opportunity was there with Skoda, I would surely be interested, if the car is competitive."
According to McRae, the Fabia does have the potential to be a frontrunner: "I was surely helped by road positioning in Australia [on the first day], but you could see on the re-run stages that I was driving at a competitive speed."
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Originally Posted by hdkkdka
