!NEW! Rallye Deutschland: Opel Teams Join World’s Rallye Elite

• ADAC Opel Rallye Cup again at German round of World Rallye Championship
• ADAM teams expect four intense days with chance at double points
• ADAC Opel Rallye Junior team celebrates European Championship with fans

Junior European Champion: Emil Bergkvist and his Opel ADAM R2 from the ADAC Opel Rallye Junior Team.

The ADAC Rallye Deutschland from August 20 – 23, 2015 is a journey into a new dimension for many teams in the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup. This round of the FIA ERC, where the Opel teams again race in two complete stages, impresses with its commanding itinerary. It is even more formidable than last year: instead of 18 there are 20 special stages and the overall distance has increased to a mighty 1,285 kilometers.

Rallye Deutschland: The World Championship round on home turf is a highlight for the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup teams

So the teams face a strenuous and exciting week when they set off on Tuesday to meticulously prepare their pace notes for the rallye. As usual, the cars will leave the service park in Trier to head to the special stages, which follow demanding asphalt tracks through the idyllic Moselle region as well as the Baumholder military range with its notorious Panzerplatte and the legendary Gina jump. At 45 kilometers, the Panzerplatte Long stage that will be run twice on Saturday is by far the longest in the entire Cup season. Directly before this super stage, the participants complete three spectator-friendly sprints of 2.9 kilometers on the Arena Panzerplatte circuit track that already attracted thousands of rallye fans last year. In addition to racing excitement, fans can look forward to great entertainment: from 2 p.m. on Saturday, the German band Revolverheld will rev things up even more.

Jump “Gina“: The Rallye Deutschland special stages follow demanding asphalt tracks through the idyllic Moselle region as well as the Baumholder military range

The first highlight is the show start at the Porta Nigra in Trier on Thursday evening. The Cup teams will tackle the first leg with eight special stages on Friday. The second leg with twelve special stages (the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup will leave out stage 17 “Bosenberg”) goes from early Saturday to Sunday mid-day. Full points and full prize money will be awarded for both parts of the rallye. At the end of the second leg, at the ADAC Rallye Deutschland finish line, the teams will have completed almost 340 stage kilometers – about three times as much as at a “normal” race in the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup. Those who make it will drive over the finish ramp in front of the Porta Nigra on Sunday afternoon.

Experience has shown that not only the world elite promise an absolutely first-class show with their spectacular World Rallye cars, the Opel ADAM Cup cars are also real attention-getters in every race and have already caused quite a sensation in the rallye world.

Top favorite: Last year’s winner Marijan Griebel has a good shot at the Division 5 class victory, and he can also capture second place in the European Championship at the FIA ERC Junior season-finale Barum Rallye in the Czech Republic the last weekend in August.

Not to mention the around 190 hp ADAM R2 with which Opel works drivers Marijan Griebel (26, from Hahnweiler) and Emil Bergkvist (21, from Torsåker) from the ADAC Opel Rallye Junior team have stirred up the FIA ERC Junior this season. Quite literally – at the Rally Estonia in mid-July, the young Swede Bergkvist already won the title before the season’s end. His German team colleague Griebel, last year’s ADAC Rallye Deutschland winner and one of the top favorites in Division 5, has a good shot at taking second place in the European Championship at the FIA ERC Junior season-finale Barum Rallye in the Czech Republic the last weekend in August. All the more reason the ADAC Opel Rallye Junior team drivers can hardly wait to perform for German rallye fans as European champions at the home race.

!NEW! Opel Delights Visitors of 43rd Oldtimer Grand Prix

Historic racing cars from Rüsselsheim make the fans’ hearts beat faster 

The visitors of the Opel exhibition at the 43rd Oldtimer Grand Prix and the fans along the Nürburgring race circuit really got their money’s worth. Numerous Opel legends from the company’s 115 years of motorsport history were exhibited and thundered round the track on their demonstration laps.

Opel Motorsport legends: The renowned cars from Opel’s long history in circuit and rallye racing were on show and in action at the Nürburgring.

Opel CFO Michael Lohscheller also visited the Nürburgring and got behind the wheel of the Opel Manta A "24 hours Spa-Francorchamps" from 1974 for a lap. “The visitors are really enthusiastic when they see our racing circuit and rallye legends. This show of pure joy is something that will serve as additional motivation back in the office. Our brand really has deep roots in the population. This is even more proof that our ambition of being approachable, exciting and German is absolutely right,” said Lohscheller.

The Opel racing cars from all eras reminded some of the visitors of their own youth when Opel cars made rallye and racing circuit history. The ‘Black Widow’, a Rekord C touring car with 150 hp, gave many a Porsche driver a fright in the 1960s when the middle class car, normally reserved for families, suddenly appeared in the rear view mirror. The Ascona A designed for the Rallye World Championship was also a real winner and gave Opel its first ever win in a world championship round; Le Mans winner Joachim Winkelhock was behind the wheel at the Oldie GP and showed that he still has the special touch. The black and yellow Kadett C GT/E Coupé driven by legendary duo Walter Röhrl and Jochen Berger when they finished fourth at the 1976 Rallye Monte Carlo was also present. The car was nicknamed the ‘moral winner’ because it could only be beaten by three Lancia Stratos racing prototypes.

The equally impressive 1914 Green Monster, the biggest racing car ever built by Opel with a 12.3-liter four-cylinder engine with four-valve technology, was the center of attention at the exhibition in the paddock. The ADAM R2, the latest successful example of Opel’s motorsports pedigree, was also on show. Three weeks ago, Emil Bergkvist and co-driver Joakim Sjöberg steered the 190 hp rallye version of the lifestyle pocket rocket to FIA ERC Junior glory.

The Opel motorsports legends thundered around the track during the traditional demonstration laps on Saturday. A total of 11 cars left the marquee set up in the new paddock and were treated to enthusiastic applause from the thousands of fans lining the Nürburgring Grand Prix track.

!NEW! Cooperative Highly Automated Driving: Opel Partners “Ko-HAF” Research Initiative

• Safety first: Communication between the “Ko-HAF”-safety server and the car
• Driving on the Autobahn: Opel will build a prototype for highly automated driving

Prototype planned: Opel will build a prototype that can display the essential functions of cooperative highly automated driving on the Autobahn.

Any driver who spends a lot of time in the car often wonders if this time could be used more efficiently, for example, by reading the newspaper, doing emails, or simply enjoying the ride. Cars that drive automatically, which do not require permanent control from the driver, would make such dreams reality.

Among the major challenges to automated driving are the highly detailed, computerized maps (so that the car knows exactly about the road it is driving down) and the process of disengaging the car from the automated driving condition, thus returning control to the driver.

These are two areas of automated driving being studied intensively by Opel in “Ko-HAF – Kooperatives hochautomatisiertes Fahren”, a German project researching cooperative highly automated driving.

Experts estimate that it takes about ten seconds for a human being to turn his attention from another activity to driving. A car that drives automatically must therefore be able to recognize the driving environment and assess the traffic situation within that time-period.

In order to make an accurate assessment, the car also needs significantly more information that it can obtain from its sensors and the map of the onboard navigation system.

This is where “Ko-HAF” and Opel come in with their research into a back-end solution called the Safety Server. In “Ko-HAF”, cars communicate with the Safety Server, supplying data such as presence and quality of lane markings or objects on the road from their own onboard sensors. The Safety Server processes this information and then provides the cars with a forward-looking digital map, which the cars need for highly automated driving.

Opel is working especially on the communication between server and car – e.g. designing the server-architecture, defining the interfaces and implementing the communication protocols.

Opel’s second area of focus concerns the driver’s actions. The company’s engineers are developing software and a system of sensors to detect and categorize the driver’s actions while the car is driving automatically.

In order to predict how the driver might react when he or she must retake control, the correlation between driving situations and the driver’s actions inside the car is of special interest.

An additional core-task is the development of a self-localization process for the vehicle. Opel is designing algorithms for visual mapping and localization which are then merged with information from back-end and onboard maps, movement sensors and the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).

Opel will build a prototype that can display the essential functions of cooperative highly automated driving on the Autobahn, i.e. automatically entering the Autobahn and merging with the traffic, driving on the Autobahn including over-taking maneuvers, and finally exiting the Autobahn automatically.

Initially Opel will test and validate the prototype hardware and the highly automated driving functionality on a proving ground. Testing will continue on public roads as soon as the prototype technology has reached a sufficiently advanced stage.

The “Ko-HAF” research initiative began in June 2015 and will run until November 2018. The project has a budget totaling 36.3 million euros and is supported by the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy.