Hankook has defended its position following an opening day of Rally del Paraguay dominated by punctures and delaminations.
Takamoto Katsuta was the only Rally1 driver not impacted by a tire problem of some sort, but the Japanese rolled his Toyota out of contention on the event’s first corner. From then on, tires have dictated the direction of the leaderboard across what has been the longest loop of the season so far at 48 miles.
Unexpectedly high temperatures allied to rougher roads than last season have taken their toll and decimated the front-running field, with world champions Sébastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville among the highest profile retirements on Friday morning.
Ogier’s team-mates Elfyn Evans and Oliver Solberg both took turns leading the event, only to slip back with punctures, while Sami Pajari’s GR Yaris Rally1 emerged largely unscathed – with only a third-stage delamination – to lead Hayden Paddon’s Hyundai by 11 seconds.
Hankook’s Steven Cho admitted it was tough to only have the option of two different compounds of the same Dynapro tire for all loose surface events in the year.
Adrien Fourmaux suffered a double delamination on the last full-length stage of Friday's action
He told DirtFish: “What I can say is the conditions were very hard. And what I can say is that although we truly believe that our development and our desire to constantly improve is there – I think we’ve shown that over the years – at the same time, I also believe that we have a good tire.
“It’s not really possible to ask one product to give the speed and performance that the drivers want in Estonia and Finland and then have to bring that same product to Kenya or to here where the conditions are so different. I think that that’s part of the challenge and part of what makes rally interesting and so we accept the challenge. But I think we also have to look at it from another perspective that says is it really possible to have a product that’s working perfectly in all these sort of areas?”
Asked to explain the issues suffered by the crews today, Cho added: “I think if we look at the tire wear that we saw at the end of the stage, there was, you know, most of the delaminations that we saw were because the tires were [worn] right down, so all the rubber was gone, it was almost fully worn out. At that point, the next stage after that is delamination. So from that perspective, I feel like, yes, the abrasiveness of the road was higher than what we expected.
“Just by looking, as I said, the high wear rate, then the delamination makes sense after that. If we look at the sidewall cuts and some of the damages that we saw on that, then that also aligns with what we saw on recce. It’s the longest loop, stage three was also a very long stage. And all of those together, I think, contributed to an interesting, but a difficult day for everyone.”
Asked for his thoughts on the tires, Evans offered a guarded response, saying: “How long have you got? I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say without getting in trouble. But I think the situation speaks for itself. I don’t need to add any words. It’s quite clear.
Evans compared incurring tire damage to being a lottery
“[It] Felt like the car was in the middle of the road, felt the car was always quite straight. But still the same. I think all the other guys, even if they didn’t get punctures, have got huge damage everywhere. So it’s a bit of a lottery then.”
Hankook introduced a revised hard compound Dynapro in time for the Acropolis Rally earlier in the summer. Fourmaux was unconvinced by the specification change.
“I don’t know exactly how it works,” he said. “I just feel that last year we had delamination already on the other hard and this year we have some other delamination but with a different cause, I would say. I don’t know. We just need to get better tires and go ahead.”
With heavy rain expected across the weekend, demand for Hankook’s hard option is expected to be limited, with the soft Dynapro likely to be the preferred option for wetter weather on Saturday and Sunday.
