Hyundai will park its updated i20 N Rally1 just one round after its debut, reverting to the older spec for Safari Rally Kenya.
On last week’s Rally Sweden, Thierry Neuville, Ott Tänak and Adrien Fourmaux’s cars benefited from reduced weight and revised suspension kinematics as part of a long-awaited series of upgrades.
But Tänak revealed to DirtFish that Hyundai will switch back to the car the team used at the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally for round three, instead of the updated one.
“Yeah, we are back to the old car,” the 2019 world champion said.
“Just so that we know reliability is there. It’s the kind of rally where reliability is priority.”
Neuville explained a lack of opportunity to stress-test the new parts led to the decision.
He told DirtFish: “Overall, I think because we couldn’t test enough on rough roads and we know that the other car is strong on that side, so I think the team preferred not to take any risk on that.”
How good was the updated car?
Hyundai ran its new updates on the i20 for the first time in Sweden
Neuville and Tänak delivered a 3-4 finish for the upgraded Hyundai in Sweden.
The reigning world champion got the better of his team-mate, but was “struggling here and there”
with balance issues and tire degradation.
However, he didn’t feel they were symptoms of the upgrades.
“I think it’s more related to the tire overall,” he said. “In the short stages we have been really fast and I felt also comfortable with the balance, but as soon as the stages were a bit longer I started struggling and especially in the high-speed sections as well. So we will investigate.
“I was using a bit stronger diff than my team-mates, maybe it was a bit too strong for some faster sections, but it worked well in many other places.
“So I don’t know. It’s maybe a combination of both with the tires.”
Neuville said the specific nature of Sweden made it difficult to assess the car.
“It felt good,” he continued. “Like I say, overall, it felt good and the performance was there.
“It’s also hard to really make an analysis, because we saw that the variation on the road position was crazy this weekend. I mean you could be in the middle of the group and have the best conditions, at some point like having the worst, and even in some sectors we saw massive differences.
“So it’s very hard to make a proper analysis, but overall we were in the game.”
Tänak believes the car “definitely should be an improvement” but is “not sure we got the best out of the car” in Sweden.
“But I would say when the car is working, it seems nice to drive,” he added.
“It’s just about putting the package together now. It’s still all quite fresh and it seems like it takes a little to find the optimum setups.”
Tänak felt the potential but couldn't find the ultimate setup in Sweden
Hyundai Motorsport president and team principal Cyril Abiteboul said the real judgement should come at rallies later in the year.
“I’m not the sort of person that believes in excuses,” Abiteboul told DirtFish, “but we didn’t design those changes for here, for snow.
“We’ve done that for the conditions that we’ll be facing: the gravel, some of the Tarmac, in particular the smooth gravel. So, sorry, ask me again in Finland, in Chile. I’m sure you will. And let’s talk there, because that’s for that, that we’ve made those changes.
“Frankly, if you look at it, actually the car was very competitive last year here, we won. And the year before, you know that Craig was very close to winning.
“So, I mean, we’ve not done that for here, but it’s true that here, I find it a bit more difficult to contain the drivers. Having said that, [there was] a bit of change of circumstance due to the tires and that’s something that we are not mastering right now.”
