The Korean manufacturer’s i20 N Rally2 car is expected to receive significant updates this spring, but in the WRC, the team is taking a bit of a sabbatical year. The team’s customer division head, Benoit Nogier, explains that the focus is on national series.
Although Hyundai does not have an official team in the WRC2 category this season, Finnish driver Emil Lindholm remains the team’s official driver. Lindholm competes in the WRC2 under the CHL Sport Auto team. The situation is similar for Teemu Suninen, although factory support is less than in previous years.
“We do not have official project in WRC2 this year. This is because first of all, we have to manage a bit the budget and make the goals. We consider at the moment the best opportunity for us was much more at the national level than at the world level with WRC2,” Nogier tells Dirtfish.
“We prefer to do a step on the side, to work a bit on the car, to improve a bit and to invest a bit more in 2024 at the national level. Our presence nationally will be much bigger than last year, but the first consequence is that we don’t have this so big and official team in WRC2.”
Currently, Hyundai’s equipment cannot match the performance of Skoda, Citroen, and Toyota. After the updates, the situation should improve.
“For sure, if we would be 100% sure that we could get a title in WRC2, maybe the choice would be different. But we have to work on the car and we must improve the car a bit to get back at the top of the category in the world championship and that’s what we’ll address in 2024,” Nogier explains.
“We are going to focus on France, at the moment it is the biggest country in terms of Rally2 competition, customers, turnover, etc. The second objective will be to carry on and to get good results in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy. They are basically the biggest markets in the world and in each country we have good drivers with a good team and a good project to just get the titles.”
Nogier wants to emphasize that Lindholm remains Hyundai’s official driver this season. Suninen’s situation is also favourable.
“We carry on with Emil as official driver this year and we kept the contract we have with Emil. Teemu doesn’t have a contract, but we will pay attention. And Emil and Teemu, even if we don’t have this official team in WRC2 this year, we are supporting them and we are supporting their project,” Nogier reveals.
Updates to Hyundai’s Rally2 car are expected from the Croatian WRC rally in April onwards.
“We are planning to homologate a quite big evolution on April 1. The biggest thing is an engine evolution, we will improve quite significantly the power and the efficiency of the engine, torque,” Nogier says.
“We are also working on reliability, little stuff we had in the past. For example, we had a (suspension) problem last year in Finland with Emil, we will solve that. This is planned for the April 1, although we still have to finalize everything with the FIA for the homologation.”
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