News has emerged that an announcement from MINI and Prodrive confirming a WRC entry is imminent. As the rendering above shows the rally car will be based on MINI’s new four-door Countryman model and will derive its engine from the 1.6 litre John Cooper Works range. It is expected the announcement will be made before the end of this week.
Norwegian driver Mads Ostberg is understood to undertaking a chief testing role with the MINI/Prodrive program and will likely sign on as one of the drivers for the 2011 season.
Despite these latest murmurings the car is still in its early stages of development. As a result the MINI is not expected to debut in the WRC until Round 5 of next year’s championship.
More news as it comes to hand.
[Source: Autosport | Pic: theSwitchback]
3 replies on “MINI and Prodrive ready to announce WRC entry”
That is fabulous news. Great to see another manufacturer seeing the value in rallying and comming to the party.
Well done Mini and Prodrive!
M@
Hopefully this will help spice up WRC which has been run down to almost nothing at the moment, but I reckon at least 3 other manufacturers also need to commit to new entries for it to be worthy of being called WRC again.
WRC is pretty rubbish compared to how good it was 10 years ago with Mitsubishi, Toyota, Peugeot, Subaru, Ford, Skoda, Hyundai all competing. The drivers were better back then with Makinen, Gronholm, Sainz, Burns, McRae, Kankunnen and so on making sure it was a tough fight.
[…] taken a few days longer than expected but MINI have just confirmed their plans to enter the World Rally Championship in 2011. The rally […]