The first two Volvo V8 Supercars powerplants will be dispatched from Sweden to Australia in late January following an exhaustive bench testing program.
Polestar’s Gothenburg operation is scheduled to keep the Yamaha-sourced 4.4 litre B8444S engines on its test rigs for endurance testing over the coming weeks.
At the unveiling of a ‘display’ engine at Sydney Olympic Park, Volvo Car Group’s Motorsport Technical Director, Martin Persson outlined the process for the program over the coming weeks.
“We’ve had the engine on the dyno for almost four weeks and we are very happy with the results as they come out,” Persson told Speedcafe.com.
“We will run the engines on the test rigs over Christmas and that will continue into January.”
“It’s looking really good,” he continued when pressed on the initial performance of the engine, which has had to fit within the pre-existing 5.0 litre V8 Supercar rules.
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“Chasing the benchmark is crucial. We know some others have had some problems in the past (the Nissan and Mercedes-AMG this year) but so far we haven’t experienced problems.”
Volvo has experience in starting an engine program from scratch in the United States’ GT World Challenge and in the World Touring Car Championship.
Persson confirmed that he expects the Garry Rogers-run Australian team to test the Volvo S60 V8 Supercars with their existing Holden engine prior to the Polestar unit’s arrival in the country.
While Rogers said that the first test could take place “as soon as today”, he remained non-committal on a specific target.
“We don’t want to start testing until we are organised. I think a lot of people do things because they can’t wait to do it,” Rogers told Speedcafe.com.
“I don’t think that’s the right way to do things. I’m just happy with the process that we follow.”
