2005 Seat Leon WTCC review and pictures
At the Barcelona International Motor Show, SEAT Sport have unveiled the SEAT León WTCC that is due to make its debut in the FIA World Touring Car Championship this season. It is one of the most advanced racing cars ever to have been built by the Spanish brand, inspired by the desire to compete for one of the most prestigious titles in the FIA calendar alongside the Formula 1 and World Rally championships. Conceived and developed at SEAT Sport in Martorell, the new León represents a technological quantum leap which will allow the Spanish manufacturer to vie for a world championship title.
Five months have passed since Jordi Gene first track-tested the handling of the chassis and the mechanical assemblies in a modified Altea last December. In this time, the engineers from SEAT Sport and Audi Sport have defined all of the remaining components for the León, undertaking an exhaustive aerodynamic study in the process. Official track testing will now commence within the next few weeks, marking the start of a fine-tuning process which should see the car making its debut before the end of the current season. Such rapid progress has been made possible by the ambitious work schedule begun by SEAT Sport a few months ago, involving 140 of the company's own personnel, R&D specialists from the SEAT Technical Centre and engineers from Audi Sport, who provided invaluable support when it came to streamlining the new model's aerodynamics in its wind tunnel. This co-operation with the German engineers will in future be extended to engine development.
"The chance to develop a racing car from scratch until it is ready for the racetrack is a rarity, so the León WTCC project has presented the whole SEAT Sport team with a golden opportunity," remarks Jaime Puig, Managing Director of SEAT Sport. "We were extremely eager to tackle the tremendous challenge that such a young team as ours faces when competing against constructors with vast motor racing experience. We have the powerful structure and extremely skilled people that are needed to turn the new León into a winner. I would like to give particular mention to the SEAT Technical Centre and to Audi Sport whose co-operation has been invaluable to us."
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