“Even those coming along with a world rally car are starting with a much better one. “Since then, while it’s not obvious that the cars have change fundamentally in terms of layout or whatever, it’s obvious that they’ve gone up, particularly with VW coming along,” he said. “When we did the Mini we felt we could be competitive by basically putting a big engine into a Mini.” “When we did the Mini RX, since then the cars haven’t changed fundamentally, but the level of optimisation has moved on two or three steps,” said Prodrive’s David Lapworth. RX was developed entirely from the ground up. The company’s previous car, the Mini Countryman RX, was based on the company’s WRC car that it campaigned between 2011-13, but the Megane R.S.
RX is the second top-level rallycross car to come out of Prodrive’s Banbury headquarters, it is arguably the company’s first true rallycross effort. The brake setup keeps the car lighter further, reducing unsprung mass at each corner to less than 30kg.Ĭredit: GCK/Prodrive A big step up from the MiniĪlthough the new Megane R.S. To keep the setup compact there’s a brake caliper fixed to the gearbox on the front axle and to the differential on the rear axle. The brakes are another interesting feature on the car, with the bespoke longitudinal engine allowing Prodrive to fit ‘in-board’ brakes to the car, meaning that instead of the wheel sitting on top of a brake disc, the disc themselves are within the car. The dampers were another bespoke component for the car, being co-developed by Prodrive and Ohlins. Prodrive says the decision was made to improve camber and high-speed cornering performance, while also providing a reduction in unsprung mass and mechanical friction, thereby increasing grip. RX has double wishbone suspension all round – a change from all other World RX cars which have McPherson struts. It’s not just the car that is a ground-up development – the engine and gearbox were both specially developed for the car, with Xtrac handling the transmission, and the four-cylinder, two litre turbocharged engine being developed in-house at Prodrive.ĭespite being a privateer team’s car – Renault’s minimal involvement centred around minor design tweaks – the car has raised eyebrows throughout the World RX paddock. Safety and performance oriented items on the car were also relentlessly tested using finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Prodrive focussed on three key areas when developing the car powertrain, suspension, and sub frame, using computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided engineering (CAE) to optimise the car’s production. The car has been developed from scratch by Prodrive, who originally developed the Mini Countryman RX rallycross car, as well as Subaru’s iconic World Rally cars and Aston Martin’s GT race cars. RX Supercar ahead of the upcoming 2018 FIA World Rallycross Championship season. GCK RX has officially unveiled its all-new Renault Megane R.S.
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