Thierry Neuville, like every Rally1 driver in the World Rally Championship, is required to talk to media when coming back to service.
Not much was said as DirtFish engaged him during the first media zone after Friday morning’s loops of stages. He was too busy talking the ears off François-Xavier Demaison, Hyundai’s technical director, and Gerard Jan de Jongh, the team’s chief engineer, instead.
After those first three stages, he’s already 45.4 seconds off the top spot. The question to ask was obvious: what’s the car not doing right?
“It’s not going fast,” was his brief reply.
Team-mate Adrien Fourmaux is the only Hyundai driver looking halfway content right now. Sitting fourth, 34.2s off the lead, he was more upbeat – partly because he knew to steer clear of Neuville and Ott Tänak.
Fourmaux felt his Friday morning was strong but that the times "were not where they should be"
“This morning I just tried to stay a bit away from them because I know they were quite angry,” he told DirtFish. “But now I will definitely speak to them and see what we can do.”
The debrief will be an interesting one. None of us will be privy to it – but Fourmaux did explain, in broad terms, what’s amiss with the Hyundai on Gran Canaria asphalt right now.
“We miss grip globally,” he said. “The car is a bit nervous also. So we should calm this down a little bit, but also gain grip.
“I saw sometimes, when it’s a combination of corners going left, right, right, the car is not reactive enough.
“In those stages, when it’s not perfect, then you lose one tenth [of a second] there, one tenth there, and then when you have 10,000 corners during the weekend, you lose 10,000 times a tenth, and then at the end you have one minute.”
The roads are still demanding enough and currently we are just working the tire a lot – that’s the basic story.Ott Tänak
Tänak’s complaints have been a little more specific that Neuville’s. He’d explained at an earlier stage end that the issues he’d suffered were a carry over from testing, for which Hyundai had been unable to pinpoint a fix.
“I’m not able to really find any balance in the car,” explained Tänak. “The roads are still demanding enough and currently we are just working the tire a lot – that’s the basic story.”
The 2019 world champion confirmed to DirtFish that he and Neuville’s problems with the i20 were “quite similar” and, like Neuville, did not appear especially optimistic that a solution was on the horizon.
“It’s been since the beginning with this car and somehow not able to find a way forward,” said Tänak. “It was the same in the test and it was the same yesterday on shakedown. We’ve been trying a couple of things now but still unable to iron it out yet.”
Sébastien Ogier had spent the opening morning in Gran Canaria battling his team-mate for the podium positions. But even he’d taken note of Hyundai’s strife and felt the adaptation process to the Hankook hard compound, making its debut this week, was likely part of the problem.
“It’s two surprises,” said Ogier of the opening morning. “One is Kalle [Rovanperä], clearly ahead, and also Hyundai, clearly behind. So that’s a bit surprising, for sure.
The time gaps between drivers have been more pronounced than typically expected of a clean asphalt event
“I believe that most of the answer in that is this new tire. It’s the first race with these tires, and we are all still working on it to understand it perfectly and make the best setup.”
Hyundai ended the first loop holding fourth, seventh and eighth places overall, with Sami Pajari only 0.2s behind Fourmaux and in prime position to establish a Toyota 1-2-3-4 on Friday afternoon.
