Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley defended the team’s decision to bring Esapekka Lappi to Rally Chile, after the Finn struggled comprehensively on Friday.
Alongside Adrien Fourmaux and Thierry Neuville, Hyundai has been rotating its driver of the third car – choosing between Lappi, Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo for each event.
Lappi was given the nod for Chile, an event he’d started three times before in the WRC, but there were plenty who questioned that decision considering Paddon’s runner-up finish two weeks ago in Paraguay.
After Friday’s six stages, Lappi is last of the Rally1 cars not to have retired from the leg, already 2m06s behind Toyota’s rally leader Oliver Solberg.
Fourmaux leads Hyundai’s charge, 1m46s ahead of Lappi with Neuville a further 9.4s adrift of his team-mate.
Asked by DirtFish if it was the wrong decision to pick Lappi for Chile, Wheatley said: “I don’t know if it’s the wrong decision. He’s having a tough weekend, no question. It’s not what he wants to do and it’s not where he wants to be.
As in Estonia, Lappi has been the slowest i20 on every stage so far
“We felt that with EP, he had a reasonable chance in normal conditions. In dry conditions, he’d have a normal chance to be in a good position this morning. His setup for this morning wasn’t suited to the rain and from then on it’s been complicated and it’s probably going to get more complicated as the weekend gets on with the running order tomorrow. But there’s still a long way to go.”
When Paddon did such a strong job in Paraguay, is it hard to justify Lappi’s performance so far?
“No,” Wheatley insisted. “Entries were shut way before we got to Paraguay. But I understand your situation, but I think the conditions this weekend are quite different.
“Thierry is in sixth, and Thierry had the speed to be winning in Paraguay as well, so it’s not 100% down to driver. The position that EP’s in at the moment… we know that when we have those wet, slippery, greasy conditions we don’t have the same level of performance that we do in when we’ve got good dry conditions. So EP’s getting the brunt of that.
“He was running last out of the out of the Rally1 cars in our team so the road conditions were not getting better that’s for sure, so he’s had a tough start.
“But whether he’s the right driver or the wrong driver, he was the driver with experience of this rally. He’s done the rally twice before [for Hyundai]… difficult, but he was confident.
“After Finland, he had a tough rally in Finland, but the speed was there. In Estonia he had a smooth, easy rally but there was no speed, so we wanted to see in Finland an increase in speed. We saw that and we felt that that was probably what we could bring to Chile.”
Wheatley also said nobody within Hyundai wanted to see Lappi’s career with the outfit end in a disappointment like crashing out of Rally Finland.
“From his perspective, possibly this could be his last rally in a Rally1 car, certainly,” Wheatley explained.
“I don’t think it’ll be his last rally at the top level because he’s a very good driver and he will be able to be… he’s exactly the type of driver that the 2027 regulations can appeal to. He can come to Estonia, Finland next year and be in the top three, to be honest.
“But I think in a Rally1 car, for sure, and I don’t think anybody in the team wanted his time with Hyundai… he’s part of the Hyundai family, and I don’t think anybody wanted his time in Hyundai to be finished with the disappointment of being quick and not finishing the rally.”
Lappi will run second on Saturday’s stages behind Takamoto Katsuta, who beached his Toyota on the opening stage.
