Thierry Neuville says Hyundai Motorsport’s decision to keep working through the coronavirus-hit summer could pay dividends on this weekend’s Rally Monza.
Unlike its rivals Toyota and M-Sport Ford, the Alzenau outfit pushed to continue a program of development events and tests through the summer. Factory i20 Coupe WRCs were present on the Rally di Roma and Rally di Alba in Italy and it was the only team to carry out a pre-event Germany and Ypres test.
That, allied to last week’s pre-Monza running, means the Hyundai drivers have had three or four times the seat time their rivals have enjoyed.
Neuville told DirtFish: “The goal for us was to be in this position [of completing asphalt development testing]. We definitely kept on working as much as we could during the period of COVID.
“Hyundai has shown, despite the virus, we were able to continue to do our job in a safe manner. We showed clearly that everything is possible, there was a lot of organization and a lot of hard work from the team to do what we did, but in the end, it worked fine and you can see that we are still safe and sound.”
Beyond aero tweaks to the car, much of the summer was spent fine-tuning engine mapping along with transmission and suspension work.
“We have done some progress,” said Neuville. “Hopefully it’s going to be enough to be the fastest. We had some good testing from [Rally di] Alba. I felt really comfortable in the car. Obviously, we didn’t face these [wet and snowy] conditions on those rallies, it’s going to be interesting this week. We did have a wet test in Ypres, but obviously the profile of the roads is very different [here].”
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Since round one in Monte Carlo, the Toyota crews have enjoyed just a single day of asphalt testing (which was ruled obsolete according to Elfyn Evans after he ran on dry Tarmac for the duration – not much of that around in Lombardy this week), while Espakka Lappi and Teemu Suninen haven’t driven the car in asphalt trim since January. Gus Greensmith completed some mileage in his entry car at a circuit in the UK last week.
Asked his opinion on Hyundai’s summer running, Toyota man Sébastien Ogier said: “It looks like we have some quite specific conditions which they might have not faced during their tests this year, but definitely they have much more kilometers done on this surface than we did.
“They had the chance to do some test for two rallies which were cancelled, for Germany and for Ypres. For us it’s a shame we were not able to get some days – I was expecting that to happen, but somehow it didn’t.”
Ogier added that he was looking forwards to this week’s Italian finale, rather than considering what might have been.
“At the end of the day,” he added, “right now, I don’t think about it. I’m just focused on this rally and preparing to do the best with what preparation I have done. With the conditions facing us right now, it’s going to be very challenging for everybody, regardless of what preparations you have done.”
