Thierry Neuville says “nobody knows” how Hyundai can fix its current performance woes after another difficult World Rally Championship outing in the Canary Islands.
Hyundai is yet to score its first win of the season, with last weekend’s round in Canary Islands highlighting the gap between the Korean marque and Toyota.
The closest Hyundai has come to a victory this year was on asphalt in Croatia earlier this month when Neuville enjoyed his strongest showing yet. The 2024 world champion was leading into the final stage before an error handed the win to Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta.
Hyundai expected last weekend’s visit to the Canary Islands to be tough, given smooth asphalt roads have proved to be the i20 N’s biggest weakness. Toyota clinched a dominant 1-2-3-4 last season and repeated the feat last weekend, winning all 17 stages.
Adrien Fourmaux once again led the Hyundai charge in fifth, albeit more than three minutes behind Ogier. Despite Hyundai introducing upgrades to the front end of its car this year, the performance gap between it and Toyota increased compared to 12 months ago.
Neuville has struggled the most to achieve a car balance that inspires confidence to push, and remains at a loss to find a solution.
“It is hard to give any feelings on this weekend. We came here and we knew we wouldn’t be very competitive and beyond that, I never got any good feeling with the car despite trying,” said Neuville, who was clocking stage times slower than last year.
“We’re far away from what we had as a car. It’s very frustrating. We saw in Croatia a bit of light at the end of the tunnel and then it disappeared.”
When asked if he knew the reason why the team is struggling, he added: “Nobody knows. I don’t know [how to fix the car], the engineers don’t know, my team-mates don’t know.”
Thierry Neuville, Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team Hyundai i20 N Rally1
Photo by: Hyundai
Hyundai’s sporting director Andrew Wheatley admitted the performance displayed in the Canary Islands was what was expected given the current conundrum facing the team in its quest to extract consistent speed from the i20 N.
“It was as we expected but one of the positives is we came here with a clear target of minimising mistakes and we achieved that, and that is down to the hard work of the team,” said Wheatley.
“It is collectively frustrating for the team and it is not for the want of trying [to fix]. It is clearly a complex thing.
“We have been working on it for a year and if it was easy we would have fixed it 11 months ago. It is clearly not an issue that is easy to fix. A number of drivers have tried, and a number of engineers have tried.
“The car is really fast in its window but the difficulty is that stages don’t take place in narrow windows, and you need a wide adaptability in the car.”
Hyundai hopes gravel rallies will ignite season
Hyundai is however optimistic it can start to turn its season around when the championship heads to the first pure gravel round of the year in Portugal next week.
The i20 N challenged for victory in Portugal last year, and recent testing has given the squad cause for renewed optimism.
“I think we have to be realistic. Beating five Toyotas is not easy on any surface. We know that we have the potential performance, and we know we have improved the reliability, we know the car and the team is working hard to minimise any time loss outside of pure performance. We have three drivers super fired up and ready to go,” added Wheatley.
Neuville shares the optimism following a positive test on gravel before last weekend’s Canary Islands visit.
“It is good to be optimistic as that is what helps us move forward,” said Neuville.
“We shouldn’t be too optimistic either. We need to have both feet on the ground and we are facing a very strong competitor that is doing everything right. They are five [cars] we are three [cars]. We might have more speed, but the rally is long.”
We want to hear from you!
Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.
Take our survey
– The Autosport.com Team
Read the full article here
