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RS-Line working hard

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Germany-based RS-Line team is currently working to put together a 2005 capaign in the FIA World Touring Car Championship. “We have updated the two Ford Focus ST170 cars we ran in the 2004 FIA European Touring Car Championship,” team manager Rainer Stiefel revealed. “The major change was fitting a new 6-speed sequential gearbox in place of the 5-speed H-pattern we used last year.”

“But we have also worked to modify a number of other things in the chassis and the aerodynamics. According to our calculations, these changes should result in an improvement of at least one second in terms of lap times”, Stiefel added.

In 2004 RS-Line started the FIA ETCC season with two cars, driven by Roland Asch and Sebastian Grunert. Although Asch decided to call it a career after four meetings, Grunert took part in most of the remaining championship’s rounds, consistently improving his pace and scoring a number of points in the Michelin Independent Trophies.

“Our plans are to get back to the Trophy with the ambition to be competitive, because the prize money is very tempting,” Stiefel said. “We have a sponsor of our own and we are looking for one or two drivers with some budget in order to finalize the programme. On their first season in an international championship the team have shown their expertise and we wish to do things properly, starting with testing together with the other FIA WTCC teams. With a proper budget we can do a good job, aiming for switching to the new Ford Focus in 2006. ”