Hyundai feels it has “no choice” other than maximum attack

Hyundai had been given the rudest wakeup call imaginable on Rally Islas Canarias’ asphalt lanes.

Toyota had given it an absolute hiding on Gran Canaria, winning every stage (one spectator superspecial was a three-way tie between Toyota, Hyundai and a WRC2 Citroën). Its lead contender in the World Rally Championship’s drivers’ standings, then Thierry Neuville, was 50 points off the top spot and the team was even further back in the makes’ race.

Portugal was not a resounding success either; it departed Matosinhos further behind in the manufacturers’ championship than when it arrived a week earlier.

Ott Tänak had led the rally, then was robbed of top spot by a power-steering failure – caused by a stone impacting a wheel, which in turn broke the hydraulics powering the steering. Adrien Fourmaux was on Tänak’s pace early Friday morning until a suspension bracket cracked under impact, then failed entirely after subsequently striking a section of bedrock, stranding him in the middle of Arganil.

Inevitable, you may say. The Hyundai is not considered as robust a machine as the GR Yaris Rally1. Why would the Hyundai trio lean so hard on a car that’s known to be susceptible to stress-induced failure?

Technical director François-Xavier Demaison has no qualms about how his drivers approached Portugal. In his opinion, the risks they took were entirely necessary, given how much ground Hyundai had lost in the first four rounds of the season.

“We are in a situation where we have to push and attack to close the gap,” Demaison told DirtFish. “This sort of thing happens in rallies.”

“We have to push. We accept the consequences.”

“It’s a comfortable position for Toyota because they can wait and they have a cushion of points which allows them to not push everywhere. And us, with the points we lost at the beginning, we have to push everywhere, so this sort of thing will happen.

“If you remember last year in Greece we didn’t have to push; Toyota had to push to close the gap and we did 1-2-3. Things change very quickly depending on the condition of where you are.

“We have to accept the risk, but take the risk and accept the consequences.”

Demaison went on to assert that, despite impacts triggering rally-altering consequences, Hyundai’s drivers won’t be told to rein it in for Sardinia in two weeks’ time.

“We will approach Rally Italia Sardegna the same way,” he said. “We have no choice.”

There is little Hyundai can do to mitigate the risks through car design, either: it has now used up all but one of its homologation jokers for the i20 N Rally1, with its most recent batch of tokens used primarily on introducing revised suspension.

Hyundai being the last of the factory teams to sign off its Rally1 car is continuing to have lasting effects four years down the line.

Demaison suggested that a comprehensive solution to the problems which blighted Hyundai’s lead cars in Portugal won’t be forthcoming due to the limitations on upgrades – and so its drivers will simply have to continue taking a risky approach to treading the extremely fine line between pace and preservation.

“You can’t just always solve your reliability issue, because most of the time, it’s a joker,” said Demaison. “And we’re limited on jokers.

“We have to find a balance between the performance and reliability. So we have to use the joker to improve the performance. We pay the fact that this car was developed with a lot of effort in too short a time, not having a proper validation process in ’21 and ’22.”

Hyundai now trails Toyota by 55 points in the makes’ race – the maximum possible score on one rally is 59, which Toyota has achieved three times this season (Monte Carlo, Sweden, Canarias).

Its fortunes in the drivers’ race are slightly better: despite his power-steering woe Tänak has cut the gap to championship leader Evans to 34 points, though its drivers occupy positions four, five and seven in the points table.