Suzuki held tarmac tests for the SX4 WRC in June in southern Europe.  The European tests started in April, but these were the first fully fledged tarmac tests. The SX4 WRC brought in for testing was evolved further from the earlier prototype design; in fact, its specifications are already close to what is planned to be fielded in this season’s WRC test entries. 

Throughout five days of driving tests, the team confirmed the performance and reliability of the much improved car. Then in the course of a further five days they worked on refining the basic settings of each component to investigate further performance upgrades.

The course selected for the latest round of testing had a layout that included big ups and downs and successive tight corners and the SX4 WRC demonstrated stable performance without encountering any significant troubles, both through low-to-mid-speed corners and on high-speed runs.

Nobuhiro Tajima, President of Suzuki Sport, comments as follows:

“The car is shaping up to an extent that I think it’s competitive to quite a degree. But our rivals’ machines are also evolving as faster and stronger, so we need to make sure we find even more speed and performance for our car.  That’s why we’ve decided to move up our schedule and try and see if we could incorporate into our test-entry 2007 model the specs originally intended for the 2008 Championship entry model.

We really need to go to such a distance to have a fighting chance in the WRC. We’ve taken time in for testing in Japan and Europe aimed at achieving further improvement and now our car is demonstrating good performance on tarmac. Corsica is just a few months away, and we’ll be working to steadily improve and bring the car to top shape so we can hope to show some fast times.”

For the team, hard at work in Europe, tests after tests will continue in the days to come, in the quest to bring out more competitive performance from the Suzuki SX4 WRC.