Rogers Jets to Sweden

Garry Rogers and two of his most senior technical staff leave for Sweden today to meet with technical partner Polestar Racing as development of the 2014 factory Volvo S60 V8 Supercar continues.

Joining Rogers on the trip are GRM chief engineer Richard Hollway and team manager Dean Cowling.

They will be in Sweden for six days, before returning in time for a test of the team’s current Fujitsu Holden Commodore VFs at Winton Tuesday week.

Polestar representatives led by boss Christian Dahl will then fly to Australia for the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 in October.

Polestar is primarily responsible for the development of the Volvo B8444S V8 engine for V8 Supercars racing. 

Chassis development work is underway at GRM in Melbourne and Rogers says he would like to have the first test run of the S60 in early December.

An unusual 60 degree layout means the Volvo engine will be a tight fit in the control Car of the Future chassis, although Rogers was playing that issue down when he spoke to v8supercars.com.au.

“We will measure it up and will plonk it in,” he said. “We figure it will all fit, but we will see what happens when we have the whole engine including airbox.”

While GRM and Polestar are having almost constant contact as the S60 is being developed, Rogers said it was important to make the trip to Sweden to meet face-to-face.

“You can talk on the phone but it’s nice if people can eyeball each other,” Rogers said. “There are some guys who we deal with over there who we haven’t met so we would just like to meet them.”

Rogers said he was unsure as yet how strong the engine would be, bearing in mind the struggles for power and economy encountered by both the Nissan and AMG multi-valve engines.

“I don’t know yet and neither does anyone else. But these Polestar guys are not fools and I believe the engine will be good.”