[Won]

Barely a week ago, Audi Sport announced its exit from the WEC at the end of 2016. Naturally, we were wondering what, if anything, would happen to Volkswagen Motorsport. Then a couple days ago rumours came out that their WRC program will be axed at their board meeting which were to happen today. Well, now the "unofficial" official news is that they are indeed pulling out of the WRC at the end of 2016 as well.

Audi Sport said they will focus on Formula E. Well, a good majority of the ex-LMP1 team will be sitting idle in the current regulation-limited scope of development in FE. Their recently announced A4 TCR car was already done by one of VW's other motorsport groups, same with the S1 rally cross car I believe, so that leaves very little (known) work for a lot of people... I still hear from various sources about Audi's plan to enter F1, but if their excuse of the financial burden stemming from Dieselgate is true, then who knows when this might actually happen.

Enter VW Motorsport. They finished the new-spec 2017 WRC car in 2015, and have been testing independently, as well as alongside the (nearly) full 2016 calendar for development. In a way, I was looking forward to seeing what they would bring for the competition, but now no one will know for sure, it seems.

VW's exit is both good and bad from my point of view. It's good, because obviously there is less competition for the championship next year. But it also raises our own expectations, and Citroen is sure to come out strong, so in the end it may not be any easier. I don't think we will suddenly be seeing a lot of ex-VW people in the office, but there will soon be an abundance of motorsport/rally engineers in the market, particularly outside of the UK. This level of uncertainly and lack of security is to be expected in this game of course, but I bet VW team on the high of winning first the driver's, then the manufacturer's title in the last 2 races didn't see this coming.

I wonder how safe Porsche's LMP program is. As above, VW had a fully developed 2017 WRC car, and Audi had nearly finished their 2017 car in 2015, so anything could happen really. Here's hoping nothing happens, at least for a while.