Cyan Racing is the official motorsport partner to Geely Group Motorsport, formerly the
Volvo
The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...
factory
auto racing
Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primaril ...
team, and runs the
FIA WTCR programme for
Lynk & Co
Lynk & Co () is a Chinese-Swedish automobile brand owned by Geely Automobile Holdings. Founded in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016, the focus of the brand is on internet connectivity and innovative purchasing models, and targets a young professional de ...
, based in
Gothenburg,
Sweden. The team’s current drivers are
Thed Björk,
Yvan Muller
Yvan Muller (born 16 August 1969 in Altkirch, Haut-Rhin) is a French auto racing driver most noted for success in touring car racing. He is a four-time World Touring Car Champion, winning the title in 2008 with SEAT, in 2010 and 2011 with Chev ...
,
Yann Ehrlacher,
Santiago Urrutia and
Ma Qing Hua who will drive the
Lynk & Co 03 TCR
The Lynk & Co 03 TCR is a racing car developed by Cyan Racing, which has also developed Volvo, having won the WTCC in 2017 which, like Lynk & Co, is part of the Geely group. The race car is based on the eponymous Lynk & Co 03.
History
The dev ...
race car.
The team was founded by
Jan "Flash" Nilsson as
Flash Engineering
Flash Engineering is a Swedish motorsport team based in Karlstad founded and owned by Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) winner Jan "Flash" Nilsson. The most recent time the team won the STCC-title was in 2008 with driver Richard Görans ...
in 1996. Christian Dahl bought the team in 2005 and renamed it Polestar Racing. After Dahl sold the Polestar performance road car division to Volvo, the team was renamed Cyan Racing.
History
The Swedish Touring Car Championship was created in 1996 as a copy of the successful
British Touring Car Championship
The Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing series held each year in the United Kingdom, currently organised and administered by TOCA. It was established in 1958 as the British Saloon Car Championship and was renamed as ...
. Volvo, which had been competing in the BTCC since 1994, partnered with the newly founded,
Halmstad
Halmstad () is a port, university, industrial and recreational city at the mouth of the Nissan river, in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast. Halmstad is the seat of Halmstad Municipality and the capital of Halland County. The ci ...
-based
Flash Engineering
Flash Engineering is a Swedish motorsport team based in Karlstad founded and owned by Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) winner Jan "Flash" Nilsson. The most recent time the team won the STCC-title was in 2008 with driver Richard Görans ...
racing team, owned by Swedish driver
Jan "Flash" Nilsson. Volvo provided financial support and the cars.
In 2005, Nilsson sold the Flash Engineering team to Christian Dahl, and it was renamed Polestar Racing.
Volvo announced in July 2015 that it had purchased
Polestar Performance, the production car tuning division of Polestar, as well as the Polestar brand. The Polestar Racing team remained under the direction of Christian Dahl, and was rebranded Cyan Racing.
The company launched the Volvo P1800 Cyan in 2020, a road legal restomod sold in limited numbers.
Cars
Achievements
Flash Engineering initially raced a
Volvo 850
The Volvo 850 is a compact executive car that was produced by the Swedish manufacturer Volvo Cars from 1991 until 1996. Designed by Jan Wilsgaard, the car was introduced in a saloon body style; an estate style was introduced in 1993.
The Volvo ...
Super Touring, built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR). Team owner
Jan Nilsson
Jan "Flash" Nilsson (born 15 December 1960) is a Swedish former active race car driver. He is most famous for his appearance in the Swedish Touring Car Championship, having driven full season in 15 seasons and for being the third most victoriou ...
won the STCC in its inaugural season (1996), as well as 1997. In 1998, Flash moved to a
S40 Super Touring, also built by TWR. In 2000, the team moved to
Karlstad.
Volvo won the Manufacturer's Championship in 2002, with Flash Engineering winning 6 of the series' 18 rounds. Following the introduction of
Super 2000
Super 2000 is an Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, FIA powertrain specification used in the World Rally Championship, the British Touring Car Championship, the World Touring Car Championship, and other touring car racing, touring car ...
rules in 2003, the team took over technical development of both the engines and the chassis from Volvo. With the new
Volvo S60 S2000, originally built by Prodrive and further developed by Flash Engineering, they won the Manufacturer's Championship again in 2003, with Flash Engineering winning 4 of the series' 16 races.
Tommy Rustad won the 2009 STCC drivers championship driving for Polestar Racing, running a
Volvo C30 S2000. 2010 saw Polestar winning the STCC teams' championship.
For the 2011 WTCC season, Polestar entered one Volvo C30, developed from scratch by Polestar, driven by
Robert Dahlgren
Robert Dahlgren (born 1 December 1979 in Skellefteå) is a Swedish auto racing driver who currently competes for the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship. He previously competed in Australia and New Zealand for a single season in the V8 Superc ...
.
2012 saw Polestar racing in the new Swedish break-away touring car championship TTA with a Volvo S60 Solution-F. The team claimed all three titles of the
2012 TTA – Racing Elite League season, including teams', manufacturers' and drivers' title with
Fredrik Ekblom
Fredrik Ekblom (born 6 October 1970) is a Swedish race car driver from Kumla. After an early career in single-seaters he switched to touring car racing where he won multiple titles in his native Swedish Touring Car Championship and later in the ...
.
2013 saw TTA and STCC merging back again as one championship, with Polestar entering five cars for the 2013 season.
2013 and 2014 meant continued success as Thed Björk claimed two straight drivers' titles and the team two consecutive teams' titles. The team claimed the drivers' and teams' titles of the 2014 Scandinavian Touring Car Championship with Thed Björk becoming drivers' champion, Fredrik Ekblom finishing third overall and Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte 12th.
As STCC adopted the TCR technical regulations for the 2017 season, Polestar Cyan Racing decided to leave the championship, joining the Swedish GT series with the Volvo S60 Solution-F and switching to a Lotus Evora GT4 for the 2018 season.
2016 saw the team joining the
FIA World Touring Car Championship with
Volvo Cars
Volvo Cars ( sv, Volvo personvagnar, styled VOLVO in the company's logo) is a Sweden, Swedish multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Torslanda, Gothenburg. The company manufactures SUVs, station wagons, and sedans. The co ...
and
Polestar, using the
S60 model, clinching the drivers' and teams' titles in 2017 with Thed Björk as driver. In 2018 the team cooperated with Yvan Muller Racing, running a pair of
Hyundai Hyundai is a South Korean industrial conglomerate ("chaebol"), which was restructured into the following groups:
* Hyundai Group, parts of the former conglomerate which have not been divested
** Hyundai Mobis, Korean car parts company
** Hyundai As ...
i30 N TCR with drivers Yvan Muller and Thed Björk, claiming the WTCR teams' title.
The team ran four Lynk & Co cars in the 2019 WTCR, claiming the teams' title and Yvan Muller finishing third in the drivers' championship.
The team claimed the drivers' and teams' title in 2020, with Yann Ehrlacher crowned drivers' champion. 2021 saw the team once again claiming both WTCR titles, with Yann Ehrlacher becoming the first-ever driver to defend his WTCR title.
Environmentally friendly racing
Volvo promoted the use of E85 in the STCC, and that series became the first production car championship series in which
bioethanol
Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a h ...
is allowed, and WTCC. Volvo claims that using E85 results in as much as 80% reduction of fossil-fuel based emissions. Though experts predicted that ethanol-based cars would be disadvantaged in terms of performance compared to petrol-fueled cars, Polestar's S60, powered by E85, won both the first and second rounds of the
2007 Swedish Touring Car Championship season
The 2007 Swedish Touring Car Championship season was the 12th Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) season. The championship was won by Fredrik Ekblom, becoming the first ever three-times STCC champion.
Teams and drivers
These were the entries ...
.
The racing version of the Volvo C30, which was jointly developed by Polestar and Volvo, represents a reversal of the usual process, whereby manufacturers take race-proven innovations and incorporate them into their production cars. With the C30, Volvo has taken technology from the C30 DRIVe street car, and implemented them to make a more fuel efficient race car.
Här är Volvos nya "gröna" STCC-bil
/ref>
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Swedish auto racing teams
Swedish Touring Car Championship
Volvo Cars
World Touring Car Championship teams
Official motorsports and performance division of automakers
Racecar constructors
Auto racing teams established in 2005