Hyundai’s third seat has become the focal point of the World Rally Championship’s silly season so far. That drive is currently occupied by a rotating cast of part-timers – but it seems team principal Cyril Abiteboul is thinking of changing strategy. Out with the part-timers, in with a full-timer.
Adrien Fourmaux has been touted as the potential first pick for that seat – with M-Sport doing its best to publicly pitch that it should remain Fourmaux’s home into 2025. But what does that mean for the current band of Hyundai part-timers? The news is unlikely to be good.
This time last year Esapekka Lappi was a full-time driver at Hyundai, taking Ott Tänak’s slot when the 2019 world champion made a brief return to M-Sport. Now there’s a question of whether he’ll be there at all.
At the stop line of Monza Rally 2020, there was an air of resignation in the cockpit of Lappi’s Fiesta WRC. After completing the powerstage, the last competitive action of the season, he simply offered thanks to those watching: “I would like to say thanks to everyone who’s been supporting us throughout the years.”
That sounded a bit like the end of the road. At that point, at least, it was. Asked if he was coming back, he replied: “I’m afraid not.”
He did, eventually, make his way back, through a winding road that included some WRC2 outings and a one-off Rally Finland which then became a part-time factory drive.
When speaking after the finish of Rally Finland this year, that atmosphere of finality which had lingered on the stop line in Monza felt like it had returned.
He’d been talking about his Finland performance with Colin Clark beforehand, drawing a parallel between Kalle Rovanperä’s penultimate-stage off and his own: “You couldn’t control the car for one tenth or whatever and then you are out,” he reflected.
But when the question of what his future in the WRC looked like, the pace slowed down. Lappi seemed reflective.
Was this August the last time we see Lappi in a Rally1 car in Finland?
“Could be,” he replied.
So if he were to be back in 2025, would it require a fourth car? “I can ask for a fourth car [next year],” he suggested.
Lappi had been running fourth, only 9.7s off the top spot, before his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 bounced out of the ruts in Laukaa and went into the trees. He’d taken a second career victory in Sweden earlier in the year. Though Latvia proved something of a disaster, his pace across the season when called on had been good.
He feels able to compete at the sharp end of the field. But it’s starting to look like Rally Chile, which is expected to be Lappi’s last outing of the season, might be his last dance with an i20 N Rally1. That’s left Lappi feeling somewhat frustrated.
“Some part of me does feel like that, yeah,” he said. “Because I really have the passion for the sport but then, the other part of me is not stressed about it at all.
“I know my life will be good, it doesn’t matter how this ends up.”
He’d once burst onto the scene as a rapid Finnish rookie, winning Finland in his first year. Eight years have since passed. He has a wiser head on his shoulders these days. And while he didn’t want to get into whether it was right or wrong, he understood Abiteboul’s desire to look at switching the third Hyundai from a rotational system to a full-time driver.
“I’m not really a guy to judge this, but I understand the point as well to get this full-time seat because then you keep your routine all the time and you are really in the car very often.
“I fully understand his point. I don’t know if it’s the right decision or not.”
Dani Sordo will drive Hyundai’s third entry at next month’s Acropolis Rally Greece.
