WRC
Tyres the focus in Hyundai post-Finland test
Hyundai Motorsport was back testing last week, with understanding Hankook’s gravel tyres among its key aims.
Early in the week, Adrien Fourmaux jumped behind the wheel of the i20 N Rally1 for two days testing on gravel in Finland to gather valuable data.
The test followed a difficult Secto Rally Finland for Hyundai, where all three i20 N entries suffered tyre damage during the rally. Thierry Neuville and Fourmaux were sitting second and third and firmly in the hunt for victory before suffering front right tyre deflations in stage 16 that demoted the pair to sixth and seventh.
Neuville went on to finish sixth while Fourmaux retired for the rally on the Wolf Power Stage after suffering another tyre deflation. Ott Tänak, who came home in 10th, also suffered a tyre issue on the final stage that sent the Estonian into a spin.
Hyundai technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison admitted that the team needs to spend more time understanding how to get the best out of the soft gravel Hankook tyre.
“It has been a tough Power Stage, for Ott we don’t know what happened and for Adrien he hit a stone and damaged the rim and that one is bad luck and not related to the tyre itself,” said Demaison.
“We did a lot of testing to improve the car and the set-up, but we have a really limited number of tests, and we didn’t spend enough time knowing and learning the tyres.
“We have a limited number of cars and days so we are going testing and planning to do a lot of testing on the tyres to understand them better. It is a new [soft] tyre, and we only had it in Kenya and then Estonia and Finland, and the next one [in Paraguay]. We have to learn it better.
“For sure we work together [with Hankook] to try to understand.
François-Xavier (FX) Demaison, Hyundai Motorsport's technical director
© Hyundai
“There is still time before the next rally and we have a test session, so we can try to understand it better and improve the situation for the remaining rounds of the season.”
Hankook engineers have been closely working with Hyundai to help the team overcome its current challenges.
“We have always had a close working relationship with all of the manufacturers and this is our opportunity to work even closer together to find ways to improve on all fronts,” said Hankook spokesperson Steven Cho.
“In rally, sometimes these things happen. We will take every instance as seriously as we can and we work in partnership with the teams and the drivers to get to the bottom of it and move forward.”
