The Volkswagen factory will no longer support racing efforts powered by internal combustion engines, which includes halting the development of a new Golf GTI TCR car. Because works racing programmes largely exist to market a company's cars, it makes some sense that Volkswagen would want to shift the focus of its racing efforts to line up with its big electrification push.

Volkswagen Motorsport will help develop new concepts based on the Modular Electric Drive Kit (or MEB for short) platform that underpins Volkswagen's ID. family of electric cars.

Volkswagen Motorsport Director Sven Smeets explained in today's announcement: "Electric mobility offers enormous development potential, and in this regard motorsport can be a trailblazer: on the one hand, it serves as a dynamic laboratory for the development of future production cars and, on the other, as a convincing marketing platform to inspire people even more towards electric mobility. That is why we are going to focus more than ever on factory-backed electric drive commitments and continue to expand our activities with the development of the MEB. Innovative technology relevant to the car of the future is our focus."