Hankook makes its soft WRC tire softer

Hankook is introducing a new specification of soft tire from this week’s Safari Rally Kenya, widening the window between its soft and hard compounds.

Hankook – the World Rally Championship’s control tire supplier since 2025 – already introduced a new specification of tire at last year’s Rally Portugal featuring a revised tread pattern, but has now changed the construction as well as the compound to make the soft softer.

Hankook’s Steven Cho said: “Some of the feedback that we got was that the grip delta, the performance delta between the soft and the hard, was not as broad as what we may have seen in the past.

“So the targets were a little bit of compliance to allow for some improved performance in low temperature and particularly when it’s damp or wet outside, and also increasing the performance delta between the soft and the hard.”

That means the Dynapro R213W will be less durable, but that’s exactly what Hankook wanted.

“In a way, actually, what we may find is that the optimal operating window of the soft is actually reduced compared to what we had last year,” Cho added. “So it’s more focused on to where a traditional soft should be. The wear of the tire is actually much higher.

“I think we also saw that even through rough stages and so on that the wear rate was actually very good, and what we actually wanted to see was more wear. So we wanted to see the tires being able to perform in its optimal window, and we’re happy to see them come to the end of the loop looking much, much more worn than what we had seen in the past.”

Hankook had hoped to introduce a new hard compound at Safari Rally Kenya too, but forest fires in Europe complicated the validation process meaning the new hard will be introduced in Portugal (May 7-10).

There aren’t currently any plans to introduce a new Tarmac tire in 2026.

“Our Tarmac tires today, I believe, are performing very well,” Cho explained. “We’ve seen some pretty exciting Tarmac rallies last year, and so there’s no real reason for us to make a big change. But we will continue to make iterations and evolutions on the specification based on the feedback that we are getting.”

Cho added the feedback on the new soft gravel tire has been “across the board positive, for sure in the right direction. We think that for this event, they’ll be put to good use”.