WRC
Wheatley: Hyundai’s response to Croatia heartbreak will define our season
Hyundai Motorsport sporting director Andrew Wheatley says the team’s response to Thierry Neuville’s late Croatia Rally heartbreak could shape the course of its season.
Neuville had looked set to hand Hyundai its first FIA World Rally Championship victory of 2026 on Sunday, carrying a lead of more than one minute into the Wolf Power Stage. But the Belgian’s hopes were shattered when he struck a concrete block and damaged the front-right suspension of his i20 N Rally1, handing victory to Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta in the final kilometres.
For Wheatley, the pain of the missed result was obvious. But amid the disappointment, his focus had already shifted to what happens next.
“What we do in the next week will determine what we do in the next six months,” he said.
“There are two things we have to be incredibly thankful for. The first is that we have Hayden [Paddon] and John [Kennard] on the podium. If you’d said 12 months ago that Hayden and John would be standing on the podium in Croatia, nobody would have imagined that was possible - even me.”
Paddon and co-driver Kennard delivered one of the stories of the weekend by finishing third overall on only their second Rally1 start. Wheatley said the performance came as no surprise to those inside the team.
“I 100 per cent believed he had the opportunity to be not just on the podium, but certainly in the top five,” he said. “When we saw his performances in Donegal, Ypres and the Ceredigion Rally, those were rough, difficult, complicated rallies where he jumped into a car he didn’t know especially well, with a team he didn’t know especially well, and he just got his head down and did the job.
Neuville had looked set to win the WRC's fourth round
© WRC
“That’s exactly what we wanted from him this weekend, and now he’s standing on the podium. That’s fantastic. It’s a really good story.”
Still, the dominant emotion on Sunday was one of devastation after Neuville’s late exit.
“There’s nobody more devastated than Thierry, that’s for sure,” Wheatley said. “We have no real comprehension of the stress and pressure those drivers are under, and being one minute in front is probably as stressful as being five seconds behind - maybe even more difficult, because you have to protect the lead.
“If you picked one person in the top 20 of this rally and gave them a one-minute lead and said, ‘You just have to get to the end of the stage,’ it would be Thierry. He knows how to do that. He’s the person you would choose in that position.
“But he made a mistake. It was a simple mistake. Nothing had happened before that. There was gravel on the road and he was trying to be so careful that it actually became more complicated.”
Wheatley made clear there was no question of the team turning on its lead driver.
“I cannot do anything to Thierry that will make him feel worse than he currently does,” he said. “He is absolutely devastated. This is not somebody who is used to making mistakes.
Paddon's podium was a silver lining
© WRC
“We need to look at the data and understand what happened, but we know pretty much that this was just a simple, simple mistake. Nobody can put more pressure on Thierry than he puts on himself.”
Hyundai’s task now is to salvage what it can from the weekend and move quickly towards the next rounds. Wheatley pointed to the fact that, despite the difficult conditions and relentless attrition, the i20 N Rally1s themselves had run faultlessly throughout the rally.
“We need to focus on the upcoming rallies,” he said. “We know the Canary Islands is not going to be the best rally for us, but honestly, when we came here, we didn’t think this would be the best rally for us either. We thought this was one we just needed to get through.
“Up until two hours ago, we were potentially going to come away with a very good haul of points, so we need to clear our minds and focus everybody inside the team on making sure we optimise everything.
“This weekend we haven’t had a single mechanical problem. We haven’t touched any of the cars. All we’ve done is clean them and send them out again on a really, really difficult rally.”
There was further disruption on Sunday when Adrien Fourmaux and co-driver Alexandre Coria were briefly left without their main pace note book, forcing Coria to read from his phone until a replacement could be collected at the next route note exchange point. Wheatley admitted it was another unwanted complication on an already punishing weekend.
“It was a very lucky situation, really,” he said. “It was fortunate that it was a Tarmac rally with route note crews, because otherwise he would have been reading the pace notes off the phone for three stages.
WRC Croatia Rally 2026, Podium
© WRC / @World
WRC Croatia Rally 2026, Takamoto Katsuta/ Aaron Johnston
© WRC / @World
WRC Croatia Rally 2026, Thierry Neuville / Martijn Wydaeghe
© WRC / @World
WRC Croatia Rally 2026, Oliver Solberg / Elliott Edmondson
© WRC / @World
“Because we had route note crews and route exchange points, they automatically got another set of notes at the next point because they had already been filled in before. So actually the damage was limited to just one stage.”
For now, though, the defining image of Hyundai’s weekend remains Neuville stranded short of the finish with victory gone.
“I’ve been around rallying for quite a long time now and I’ve seen quite a few disappointments,” he said. “I’ve only been with the team for six months, but I cannot believe how much these people want it, how much they want to win. Everybody in the team will feel absolutely devastated.
“I’m delighted for Taka, because Taka is a nice guy. But he had his win in Safari - we didn’t need to give him another one. I am most devastated.”
