Polestar Racing is a Swedish motorsport team, affiliated with Volvo

Volvo

AB Volvo is a Swedish builder of commercial vehicles, including trucks, buses and construction equipment. Volvo also supplies marine and industrial drive systems, aerospace components and financial services...

, currently competing in the Swedish Touring Car Championship

Swedish Touring Car Championship

Swedish Touring Car Championship was a touring car racing series based in Sweden, but also with rounds in Norway. They began operating in 1996, heavily influenced by the British Touring Car Championship and the success of BTCC racing on Swedish television...

 (STCC) and World Touring Car Championship

World Touring Car Championship

For the video game, known as World Touring Car Championship in Japan, see TOCA World Touring CarsThe FIA World Touring Car Championship is an international Touring Car championship sanctioned by the FIA.-History:...

. The team promotes environmentally friendly

Environmentally friendly

Environmentally friendly are terms used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies claimed to inflict minimal or no harm on the environment....

 racing, and features ethanol

Ethanol

Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...

 engines and E85

E85

E85 is an abbreviation for an ethanol fuel blend of up to 85% denatured ethanol fuel and gasoline or other hydrocarbon by volume. E85 is commonly used by flex-fuel vehicles in the US, Canada, and Europe. Some of the benefits of E85 over conventional gasoline powered vehicles include the potential...

 fuel. The team’s current drivers are Robert Dahlgren

Robert Dahlgren

Robert Dahlgren is a Swedish auto racing driver, he currently competes in the Swedish Touring Car Championship for the Polestar Racing Team in a Volvo C30...

 and Tommy Rustad

Tommy Rustad

Tommy Rustad is a Norwegian auto racing driver. He currently drives in the Swedish Touring Car Championship. Tommy is the son of former wellknown Norwegian racer Ola Rustad.-Early Years:...

, who race a Volvo C30

Volvo C30

The Volvo C30 is a small family car produced by Volvo Cars. The C30 is a three-door, four-seat hatchback powered by straight-4 and straight-5 engines. The car is a hatchback version of the S40/V50/C70 range, and uses the same Ford C1 platform. It is being marketed as a premium hatchback or a...

.

History

The Swedish Touring Car Championship was created in 1996 as a copy of the successful British Touring Car Championship

British Touring Car Championship

The British Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing series held each year in the United Kingdom. The Championship was established in 1958 as the British Saloon Car Championship and has run to various rules over the years – "production cars", then FIA Group 1 or 2 in the late 1960s...

. Volvo, which had been competing in the BTCC since 1994, partnered with the newly founded, Halmstad

Halmstad

Halmstad is a port, university, industrial and recreational city at the mouth of Nissan in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast. Halmstad is the seat of Halmstad Municipality and the capital of Halland County...

-based Flash Engineering

Flash Engineering

Flash Engineering is a Swedish motorsport team based in Karlstad founded and owned by two-time Swedish Touring Car Championship winner Jan "Flash" Nilsson. The most recent time the team won the STCC-title was in 2008 with driver Richard Göransson...

 racing team, owned by Swedish driver Jan "Flash" Nilsson

Jan Nilsson

Jan "Flash" Nilsson is a Swedish racecar driver. He is most famous for his appearance in the Swedish Touring Car Championship, having appeared in all fourteen seasons and for being the second most victorious driver .- Early career :Jake Nilson started competing in Formula Ford in 1983 before...

. Volvo provided financial support and the cars. The team initially raced a Volvo 850

Volvo 850

The Volvo 850 is a compact executive car produced by Volvo Cars from 1992 to 1997 and designed by Jan Wilsgaard. Available in sedan/saloon and station wagon/estate body styles, the Volvo 850 was notable as the first front-wheel drive vehicle from this Swedish manufacturer to be exported to North...

, and moved to a S40

Volvo S40

The Volvo S40 is a small family car produced by Volvo. It introduced the first generation S40 and V40 cars in 1995...

 in 1998. In 2000, the team moved to Karlstad

Karlstad

Karlstad is a city, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city had 61,685 inhabitants in 2010 out of a municipal total that during the first quarter 2010 was 84,885 inhabitants...

. The team began racing a Volvo S60

Volvo S60

The Volvo S60 is a compact executive sedan produced by the Swedish automaker Volvo from 2000. Two generations of the sedan have been produced to date.-First generation :...

 in 2001, and raced those cars through the 2007 season. Following the introduction of Super 2000

Super 2000

Super 2000, also known as S2000, is an FIA specification and classification for production based race cars. The specification is split to cover both rally and touring car racing. Super 2000 rally cars are also permitted to compete in Super 2000 World Rally Championship events...

 rules in 2003, the team took over technical development of both the engines and the chassis from Volvo. In 2005, Nilsson sold the team to Christian Dahl, and it was renamed Polestar Racing. In 2010, Polestar released a one off concept prototype of a high performance Volvo C30. Though externally derived from the STCC car, the concept gets a heavily tuned version of the 2.5-litre Volvo T5 engine, which is claimed to be rated at 405hp and 510 Nm. The car uses a Haldex AWD system and a front and rear Quaife mechanical differential. Polestar claim a 0-60 time of under 5 seconds, and a top speed of 155 mph. With the C30 concept, Polestar intends to gain awareness to their brand as a Volvo affiliate, as well as to be adopted as Volvo's potential in house tuning division. Volvo Cars

Volvo Cars

Volvo Car Corporation, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Swedish automobile manufacturer founded in 1927, in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Volvo was originally formed as a subsidiary company to the ball bearing maker SKF. When Volvo AB was introduced on the Swedish...

 has announced that Polestar will enter one C30 car for the 2011 WTCC season. It will be driven by Robert Dahlgren.

Achievements

Jan Nilsson, driving for Flash Engineering, won the STCC in its inaugural season (1996), as well as 1997. Volvo won the Manufacturer's Championship in 2002, with Flash Engineering winning 6 of the series' 18 rounds; and 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.

Current Season

In 2009, the team features two bioethanol-powered Volvo C30s, driven by Robert Dahlgren and Tommy Rustad. Dahlgren won the first race of the season at Mantorp Park. The team will enter the WTCC round at Brands Hatch with Dahlgren and Rustad.

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 is allowed. Volvo claims that using E85 results in as much as 80% reduction of fossil-fuel based CO2 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

2007 Swedish Touring Car Championship season

The 2007 Swedish Touring Car Championship season was the 12th Swedish Touring Car Championship season. The championship was won by Fredrik Ekblom, becoming the first ever three-times STCC champion.-Drivers:These were the entries for the 2007 Season....

.

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.