Lindholm competed in the World Rally Championship last year with Hyundai’s Rally2 car, but the season turned out to be quite a catastrophe.
Lindholm joined Hyundai in 2023 with high expectations, and at first, everything looked reasonably promising. Then came 2024 – and everything went more or less wrong.
Lindholm competed in the WRC with Hyundai’s Rally2 car alongside his compatriot Teemu Suninen, but in terms of results, the year was downright poor.
However, there is no bitterness in Lindholm’s voice as he looks back on his difficult year.
“To be honest, the first half-year with Hyundai wasn’t bad at all in the end. If you look at the big picture, we had, for example, pretty good pace in Central Europe. In Chile, I made my own mistake, and in Finland, we had a bunch of technical problems again, but overall it wasn’t that bad,” Lindholm said.
The following year, however, everything changed for the worse.
“Last year, on the other hand, was a disaster – but it was a disaster for them as well. The same people, the same team, so yes, we were all in the same boat,” Lindholm said frankly.
Lindholm began the 2023 season with Toksport’s Škoda but switched to Hyundai mid-season. He assumed that would be the right route to the top class. In the end, it wasn’t.
“Well, if only I’d had a crystal ball when I made that decision,” he reflected.
“But the goal was, of course, to reach the very top – and we were actually quite close to it in the end. It didn’t happen, but at least I got to test the car. I got to drive the Rally1 car and to work with the factory team as well. That alone was valuable. I learned a great deal,” Lindholm continued.
This year, Lindholm has once again been competing with Toksport, driving a Škoda.
“This year, I’ve actually been driving quite little – only a few rallies so far – but still, we’ve managed to keep up the pace. It hasn’t been easy to get everything to fall into place throughout an entire rally, but at the moment, we’ve done reasonably well,” he summed up his current season.
