The Opel Motorsport returns to the European Rally Championship with the recent unveiling of the Corsa Rally4, reviving the team that won the ERC Junior Championship four times in a row at its height.
Between 2015 and 2018, Emil Bergkvist, Marijan Griebel, Chris Ingram and Mártiņš Sesks had success with Adam R2 before the team fell out at the end of the 2019 season.
ERC’s most successful junior team is set to return to the tournament in 2022.
„We will announce the program soon. The idea is to get back to ERC with a dedicated team with Corsa Rally4 as well.Jörg Schrott, CEO of Opel Motorsport in DirtFishnek.
“Young riders come to us and would like to have the opportunity to take the next steps in their career. So the idea is exactly the sameSchrute said.
The plan is to give the talents of the ADAC Opel e-Rally Cup, which ran for the first season in Germany, a chance to take off at ERC. Accordingly, there may be one name Laurent Pellier, former member of the Peugeot Rally Academy Program. Pelée won the e-Rally Cup with Saintéloc Racing two races before the end of the season this season.
Opel is also starting to gain experience, with Poland’s Łukasz Lewandowski participating in five ERC races with the Rally4 Corsa this year. Unfortunately, he missed the Hungary Rally due to illness, so we couldn’t see him at home, but he’s been there in Poland, Latvia, Italy, the Czech Republic and Portugal. He didn’t achieve a real great result, his best was the 50, but the data he collected could be valuable to the Factory program. And there’s Peugeot Connect too, who, as a member of Stellantis, have access to all the data they’ve collected with its sister model 208 Rally4.
Moreover, as a member of the large group, it is now possible to retain its competitors after ERC3. While Opel hopes to be included in Rally2 in the long term – if hybrids are introduced into the category in the future – Schrute indicated that ERC4 Junior graduates would stay home by other means.
“Within the Stellantis group, there is still a chance for Rally2” – Tell. “It’s tough for us when we had riders like Chris Ingram and the others, but we didn’t get a chance to keep them in the R5 program. So they went to Hyundai, Škoda. Within the Stellantis family, we now have a chance to keep the little ones if they’re good enough to take the next step. towards Rally2”.
