Hankook’s Steven Cho knew the question was coming and he wasn’t about to duck it. Typically, he offered a considered and sensible response. But it wasn’t easy.
It was one of those moments where you didn’t quite know where to look. Sébastien Ogier was taking no prisoners. Not for the first time in his career, he was far from impressed with the tires beneath him. This time, it was Hankook in the firing line.
Astonishingly, Toyota’s French superstar had just shipped more than a minute in a shade under 15 miles across the second stage of the Monte Carlo Rally.
Reaching the finish of the Esclangon test, he took a pause before offering his view on the four Hankook Winter i*cepts sitting at each corner of his GR Yaris Rally1.
The champ said: “I’ve never seen that in my whole life, such a s*** tire, unbelievable.”
It’s worth remembering all the crews were running Hankook’s tires in Monte, so Oliver Solberg’s benchmark was delivered on the same covers.
Ogier did not hold back in criticism of Hankook winter tire
Cho wasn’t interested in excuses.
“Honestly,” he told DirtFish, “it was hard to hear a nine-time champion say that about your tires, but you know we’re here in motorsport, everyone is pushing and putting themselves on the line to do the best job they can.
“It’s clear that the performance of the tire is suboptimal here. We’ve had many, many years of mild Monte Carlos and this is much more snow and slush than we had expected.
“We knew feedback from last year – and some of the feedback directly from Sébastien as well – was that if there’s a lot of snow and slush, it’s going to be trouble. We were sort of hoping the weather wouldn’t turn this way.”
And then it did.
Some of the crews called on the FIA to allow the crews to cut their own tires, opening the tread pattern to allow more snow and slush to be dispersed. Cho’s not sure.
Feedback suggested tires needed more open tread pattern
“We did some modifications to the tire,” he said. “But actually, we worked with the FIA in advance of coming here. We did modify the tread, so we did actually add more grooves. But we did it all on the Hankook side.
“We did it in advance of pre-event testing and so all of the teams and drivers will have had ample opportunity to know what they’re running. It just wasn’t quite enough because the snowfall was unprecedentedly a lot.
“I think allowing cutting for each individual team opens up a whole Pandora’s box that we or the FIA don’t want to go down. There are implications.”
Cho added that an evolution of the studded snow tire is close to being signed off.
“The problem with snow specs,” he said, “and this is going to sound like a motorsports excuse… but the seasonality range is so small, to find conditions that are representative of here [is difficult].
Teams sampled Hankook's modified tires on pre-event test
“That means the development cycle takes a little bit longer than your standard gravel tire or Tarmac tire. We have a new development [tire] that’s been very promising. It’s very close to being validated. We just didn’t have enough time to bring it this time.”
Talking in more detail about the current tire’s successor, Cho offered: “The pattern looks from the same family, but it’s much more open. The void area is much, much bigger and the compound activates much better in these colder conditions. We’re also working on improved stud protrusion as well.
“We think it’s going to be a very good step forward. We’ve had them already run by the P1 teams, and the feedback has been positive. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to keep pushing until the last moment. But I guess if you zoom out a little bit, we’re feeling OK about the progression.
“This event was just really tough for us and for the drivers and for everyone.”
