Hyundai technical director François-Xaiver Demaison has conceded that the new Hankook hard compound asphalt tire – making its World Rally Championship debut on Rally Islas Canarias this week – has exacerbated a weakness in the design of its Rally1 car.
All three i20 N Rally1s were well off the pace of the Toyotas, which ended the first day of action in Gran Canaria locking out the top five positions. Thierry Neuville leads the trio in sixth, 1m13.3s behind rally leader Kalle Rovanperä.
How cars and drivers have adapted to Hankook’s Ventus WRC3 has had a significant effect on the leaderboard, with Sébastien Ogier citing it as the reason he believes Rovanperä has been so dominant thus far.
In Hyundai’s case, Demaison believes the i20 N Rally1 simply isn’t designed in a way that interacts well with the new tire – and that only fundamental design changes, not setup tweaks, can remedy the issue.
Demaison told DirtFish: “The conditions of this new tire highlights the fundamental issue we have with the car, which is not too difficult to solve, because we have been through this in the past. But we’ll need jokers and homologation to change a few things. We don’t have so many left, we’ll have to be careful.”
Demaison, along with the rest of the Hyundai team, hadn't expected Toyota to have such a clear performance advantage
Hyundai has been blindsided by its performance deficit to Toyota in Gran Canaria so far, admitting it was not prepared for such an outcome.
“We expected a much better result,” admitted Demaison. “We haven’t done our homework properly before coming here, but it’s motorsport, it’s rallying. We have a new tire manufacturer and we didn’t expect to have so many issues with managing the tires through the days.
“We are far [from the front], but I think it’s been quite a strange day: seeing a Finnish driver beating the Tarmac expert (Sébastien Ogier) in all the stages. So yes, we are scratching our heads – but I think Mr. Ogier is also scratching his head, trying to understand why there is such a big difference [to Rovanperä].”
Among those taken by surprise at the dearth of pace in the i20 was Neuville. Demaison indicated the reigning world champion expected better performance was possible based on his outing at Rally Sierra Morena in southern Spain earlier this month.
“I think some [drivers] were confident, some less,” said Demaison. “Thierry did a rally [Sierra Morena] where he was quite confident at the end of the rally, but it was not really representative. Here, with different conditions, we are struggling much more.
“We tried many [setup] directions with all three drivers this afternoon. So now we have to make a conclusion of what is the best solution for tomorrow and mostly for Sunday.”
Despite Adrien Fourmaux being fastest out of the blocks in the morning, running as high as fourth on Friday morning before sliding down the order, he hinted that he was already lacking confidence in the car’s ability to handle the new Hankook after his pre-event test.
“I think it’s easier with the soft [compound],” said Fourmaux. “When we did tests and with the hard we are struggling a little bit. We need to understand, that’s the thing. Why are we so slow compared to the others.”
Ott Tänak, in the middle of the Hyundai sandwich with 0.7s in hand over Fourmaux and 0.8s behind Neuville after the first day of Rally Islas Canarias action, reinforced that any setup changes during the rest of the rally would merely paper over cracks, rather than cure the ills afflicting all three i20s this week.
“There’s no medicine for it,” said Tänak. “We’ve been more under the car today than in the car, so I’ve been trying all kinds of things.
“In the big picture, all the things are nominated: transmission is sealed, suspension is sealed, everything is sealed. So we can just do minor things like change springs, change the roll bar position a bit, or change clicks. But these are all kind of masking the issue, not really fixing or curing.”
Tänak admitted it's difficult to stay motivated "all in" after falling so far back
Considering about his expectations for the weekend, he added: “All we can do is what we’ve been doing today – that’s the best we can do. It’s very hard to find full motivation to fight for sixth place.”
Neuville echoed that sentiment when asked what he had changed on his i20 through Friday. With a thin smile, the Belgian offered: “We don’t have enough time to make the list now.
“But I mean, the fundamentals were not possible to change. On a race, again, you are very limited on what you can bring to the race.”
