Hyundai will start this year’s Safari Rally Kenya with a radically different approach to the set-up of its trio of i20 N Rally1s, as the Korean firm aims to avoid a sixth consecutive defeat in Africa.
Toyota has dominated the Naivasha-based event since its return to the World Rally Championship calendar in 2021. And while a succession of Yaris WRCs and Rally1s have flourished in the season’s most challenging conditions, the Hyundais have struggled. Last year’s double podium with Ott Tänak second and Thierry Neuville third is the highlight.
Talking ahead of this year’s event – and on the back of a fastest time at Thursday’s shakedown stage – Neuville admitted a change of approach was needed.
“Our biggest issue here in the past was the mist and the transmission,” he said. We have tried basically – and I think it’s the first time that we really try – to make the car as safe as possible in terms of steering angle, wheel displacement, heating system. Really to just avoid the problems we have faced for many years over here, rather than focusing on performance.
“We tried to test in conditions where those issues were the most present. I cannot say if we have solved all the issues, but honestly, we tried. Obviously, we already tried to keep the cars as dry as possible from the inside, [but now] the roof has been put a lot of attention on the whole blower system and trying to get the humid air out of the cockpit. But also on kinematics generally and steering angle, just take a bigger safety margin.”
Team-mate Adrien Fourmaux said the current spaceframe Rally1 cars didn’t lend themselves to keeping the water – and subsequent mist – out.
“The issue is now the cars are like full carbon,” the Frenchman told DirtFish.
“It’s not like a proper chassis where you put a roll cage in. So, there is always more space to get something going inside like dust or whatever. We have seen it in the past, so the team have been working hard on it.
Hyundai drivers have spent too long standing at the side of the road in previous years. A more conservative approach could change that
“You can work on your system inside the car, which means that all the technical side, like the heater, the windscreen, the blower… and you also have some stick inside the car to clean the windscreen [if everything else fails]. You just make sure that you don’t put wet things inside the car, so you try to always get the cockpit dry – avoid some water going under the floor into the car. It’s all of these kind of things.”
Hyundai has won three of the last four Acropolis Rallies. With Greece’s WRC counter reckoned to be the roughest in Europe, why can’t that reliability and pace be replicated in Africa?
Neuville explained: “It’s the roughness, generally the roughness. I mean it’s not a secret that over the 13 or 14 years we have done with the team we have always had little issues and those issues are difficult to solve. I don’t know why, but those issues on a rally like this they come back quite often and hit us very strong.
“I think here [in Africa] it’s worse. Acropolis, yes, it’s rough, but on the other hand, it’s not these big steps, we’re not fighting with the humidity, with the fech-fech. All the mechanical parts are suffering more. Yeah, for sure Greece is also a rough event, but it’s just a different kind.”
