It is the Czechs' hottest rally weapon to date, the Fabia built according to the FIA R5 regulations with the simple name: Fabia R5.
The Fia-R5 regulations stipulate a 1.6 liter turbo engine and also says that the unit must come from the same group as the rally vehicle. No chance of sinfully expensive special solutions. May you think. But the manufacturers don't make it that easy. The Volkswagen Group has so far lacked a pure 1.6 liter turbo that could be saddled up. And so a 1.8 liter block (EA888) is used. The cylinder head, in turn, is free, here the specialists from Oreca have provided support. As a turbo you fall back on the charger that you would otherwise find in Audi's RS3. In the end, the 1.6 liter turbo in the Škoda Fabia R5 around 280 HP, with a smile you might notice that - it is the performance that the FIA was striving for. In the end, it could be a few more horsepower.
The gearbox may only have 5 gears, which in turn are sequentially chased through the alleys. The all-wheel drive is a rather simple piece of mechanics, the rear axle differential comes from the specialist X-TRAC, the power distribution and the locking effect must not be variable. The Fabia R5 comes with an 50: 50 distribution between front and rear and locks with 80-90% per axis.
Excursion in the Škoda baby surface-to-surface rocket
Well, the head nods violently back, then forward, once to the left. Once on the right, the small engine fires its joys of life around your ears. It's noisy. Really loud. Warm slickTubes offer incredible grip, the heavily locked axle does the rest. Zack and gravity pulls on the helmet. It works twice, three times, also a kind of training.
Jan Kopecky pulls on the handbrake, flips on the steering wheel, lets the Fabia slide around a 90 ° right-hand bend with barely braked vigor. Apparently sticky asphalt surface results from the dynamic dictation of the rally driver. The newly minted Czech rally champion lets the R5 Fabia slide through a pedestrian tunnel - I will read the speedometer on the onboard camera later: Almost 130 km / h - this tunnel is hardly wider than the rally car itself.
A courageous pluck on the handbrake initiates half-time. The same 90 ° bends again. I stiffen my neck muscles, focus on the pain that is about to follow. My non-rally pilot figure was pressed into the seats. I bear the pain that the belts give me in the lumbar area, grinning, grinning dumbly with joy.
Not that bad..! 😉
And what happens in the background?
The film material now inserted is not complete. Completely unprepared, I was given the opportunity to shoot a few scenes “behind the scenes” of the Škoda Auto Deutschland rally team. While Fabian Kreim and Armin Kremer drove the first special stages at the Germany Rally - I took a look around the team…
... nothing later came of the planned interviews. Deadlines and the simple everyday life of a rally had caught up with us. But I think, above all, the interview on the subject of “technology” of the rally Fabia R5 should not be left gathering dust in the digital evidence chamber!
