The man behind the C30

The Swedish Touring Car Championship Volvo-team Polestar Racing are currently working hard on the new Volvo C30 S2000. The car will make its touring car debut in April with drivers Robert Dahlgren and Tommy Rustad.
“It is a good car on paper, but it is impossible to know today where we are compared to our opponents,” said technical director Jan Andersson to STCC.se.

Andersson is responsible for the development work of the C30 in S2000-spec. The line between success and failure is thin according to the Swede.
“You do not know how good work BMW in Germany are doing during the winter. In STCC it is all about a few tenths between success and fiasco. If we are one tenth faster than the BMW it is a success, if we are three tenths behind it is a disaster,” said Andersson.

While the development work of the car is at full speed, there are no plans to test the car outside Sweden despite the majority of the major STCC-teams going abroad for pre-season testing.
“We see no reason to go abroad to test. A lot of the tests done in the beginning will be function tests to see if everything is working. We will test with one car making it more efficient instead of spreading the resources on two cars,” said Andersson.

The official STCC-tests starts on April 3rd where the team will be present with both cars. Robert Dahlgren will most likely do most of the pre season testing, but Andersson is not worried that Rustad will have problem adjusting to the car.
“I think Rustad will get in to the driving quite fast. He has a good car control and is a good drivers, we are not worried about that,” said Andersson.

Currently seven persons are working full time on the development work of the new car. Among others we have Mattias Evensson working with the engine and Per Blomberg who is working with the chassis.
– It is a big project which is quite unique in Sweden. We have done some tests and focused a lot of our recent time on the chassis and aerodynamics. The tests that we have made has shown that we have a good car to work with, at least on paper,” said Andersson.

How the C30 differs from the old S60-model and if it will be better is something Andersson does not want to go in further on.
“It is hard to say. It is a big difference between the two cars and our first year will be somewhat of a test year. Of course we are trying to create a car as good as possible. But today we cannot say if we are on the right side of the tenths to be enough on the sporting side,” said Andersson.