SUBARU YESTERDAY became the latest of a growing number of major motor manufacturers to quit the world motorsport stage, with the Japanese firm announcing that it is to withdraw from the 2009 World Rally Championship.
The revelation comes just 24 hours after Suzuki announced that it, too, will not compete in next year’s World Rally Championship (WRC) and less than a month after Honda announced its withdrawal from Formula One.
The Subaru team, run by UK-based Prodrive, has been one of the WRC’s mainstays over the past 20 years and in that time won three constructors’ titles with drivers Petter Solberg and the late Richard Burns and Colin McRae. Subaru was one of just six teams that took part in this year’s championship, finishing third behind Citroën-Total and BP-Ford.
The withdrawal of two major teams from the WRC will come as a blow to Ireland’s staging of the opening round of the 2009 campaign, due to kick off in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, on January 30th.
According to John Naylor, event director of Rally Ireland: “While it is disappointing that we are down four drivers for Rally Ireland in January, the event still promises to be a great show with the world’s top drivers on display, including five times world champion Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen. The world’s best rally drivers will still be battling it out through 19 stages and over 350km of the northwest of Ireland in just over six weeks time.”
Suzuki’s departure came after just one year in the WRC, with the company also citing the global downturn in car sales as the reason for suspending competition at the highest level.
Despite the withdrawals, however, the sport’s tyre supplier, Pirelli, remains confident about the future, with motorsport director Paul Hembery saying the series will recover.
“What’s happening now is a re-shaping of the WRC,” he said. “We’ve got the new technical regulations coming for 2010 and I’m enormously excited about that season.”
The Subaru name is likely to remain in the WRC in 2009 in some form, however, with the independent Norwegian team Adapta running two cars.