Wheels India will design and develop forged alloy wheels for the TC4-A Vento, Volkswagen Motorsport India’s touring car. The TC4-A Vento’s claim to fame is its lap time of 1.07.892 around the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore, making it the fastest touring car in the country. The alloy wheels will be made at Wheels India’s production facility in Chennai.
The forged alloy wheels have stronger structural rigidity and are lighter by 1.5 to 2 kg, as it has a denser grain structure which contributes to better strength to weight ratio as compared to cast alloy wheels, according to the company. The forged alloy wheel is approximately 60 per cent stronger and has exceeded the performance benchmarks set by the cast wheel, claims Wheels India. Volkswagen Motorsport India has also conducted various tests of the wheels on the TC4-A Vento in real world conditions with data logging and has achieved good results which correlate with the simulation and real world conditions.
On the partnership with Wheels India, Sirish Vissa, head of Volkswagen Motorsport India said, “Our race machines are constantly evolving and team is always looking for ways to improve the dynamics of our race cars. The addition of the forged wheel has had a considerable impact on weight savings and this in turn has been a major performance upgrade. With further calibration we expect to improve performance in the future.” Mr. Vissa further added, “It’s a great step by Wheels India to develop and manufacture high performance and robust forged alloy wheels in India that match the performance and safety standards required for motorsports. Since 2010, we have imported wheels from UK and Germany and now we finally have a local supplier that develops high quality standard wheels for motorsports.”
On the development of the forged alloy wheel, Shriram Vijayaraghavan, SVP, Wheels India said, “The wheels have gone through extensive development both in the laboratory and on the race track. The laboratory simulated the load conditions on the wheels when driven on these race tracks. We have collected and analysed data from the wheel and optimized it to meet the performance requirements of the racing car.”