Skoda Motorsport down for the 2019 WRC2 season, leaving Tidemand – WRC



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The WRC2 team of the Skoda Factory World Rally Championship will consist of defending champion Jan Kopecky and rising star Kalle Rovanpera, with Pontus Tidemand leaving the team.

Kopecky and Rovanpera will drive Skoda Fabia R5 cars, while Skoda will reduce its crew of five to two crews.

At the Skoda Motorsport annual press conference in Prague on Tuesday, Skoda team manager Pavel Hortek said: "Jan is 36 years old now, he's been with us for 11 years and maybe it's even too.

"But he's getting better and this year may have been his best year ever.

"He is very keen to continue and his knowledge for the development of the car is very important to us.

"It was not easy to have so many pilots in 2018 and we discovered that Jan and Kalle are so important to us that we can live very well with these two crews – we have the experience and an extremely talented young man. "

Tidemand signed his contract with Skoda in Prague, but told Autosport that he could have stayed another season in the Fabia.

"We were lucky enough to stay in Skoda," he said, "but it would have been five years and the years go by.I'm 28 years old this year and if I want to become a pilot WRC, I have to do something else.

"We are working on opportunities, maybe we could do some rallies in a world rally car – Sweden still wants to do that.

"This [Sweden] is one of the rallies for which I can make a good result. We will see."

At the top of Prague, Skoda unveiled the next evolutions of its Fabia R5 car, with the approval scheduled for the summer.

Skoda Motorsport director Michal Hrabanek said he was still evaluating the new Fabia.

"We are still evaluating this car over the current Fabia R5," Hortek said.

"We are testing this new car and, of course, we want to gather experience to see where we can improve the performance or reliability of the car, or make it more user-friendly for mechanics when they have to work .

"We are evaluating, so I can not tell you for the moment how different it is from the current car or how many new parts we will have.

"For the moment, the car must be ready for certification in the middle of the year.

"We will first introduce it into the team soon after work [homologation] and then sell to customers soon after. "

Skoda also confirmed the opening of its new plant at Mlada Boleslave on Tuesday.

The installation of 16,400 square meters includes 10 building bays and a significantly improved logistics. Hrabanek said, "It's a lot simpler now and it's a commitment to our customers.

"We have sold nearly 250 Fabia R5 cars and this facility will help us sell more and make sure we continue to supply spare parts."

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