The 2026 World Rally Championship season will get under way in two weeks’ time at Rally Monte Carlo. While Toyota’s WRC drivers have begun their test programme in France with the team’s Rally1 car, Neuville instead climbed into Hyundai’s i20 N Rally2 machine.
So why on earth was Neuville driving a Rally2 car when, in just a couple of weeks, he is supposed to be attacking slippery mountain roads in the far more powerful Rally1 car?
The answer lies in testing restrictions. Each WRC driver is effectively limited to just seven test days outside the team’s own test area – across the entire season.
Those restrictions apply specifically to Rally1 machinery, meaning that running a Rally2 car does not count as an official test day.
Even that does not fully explain Neuville’s test, as the Belgian will not be competing at Rally Monte Carlo in a Rally2 car. The real reason was found beneath the Rally2 car – the Hankook tyres.
Hankook became the official tyre supplier to the World Rally Championship at the start of last season. The new tyres caused headaches for several drivers over the course of the year. Tyre choices are at their most critical at Rally Monte Carlo, where conditions can swing from one extreme to another even within the same special stage.
That is why Neuville racked up kilometres on Wednesday behind the wheel of a Rally2 car – to gain a better understanding of Hankook’s tyres and how they behave. At the same time, he saved one valuable test day.
Neuville knows the tricks of Rally Monte Carlo well, having started the event no fewer than 15 times and claimed two victories in the classic rally. At the moment, tyres represent his biggest question mark, as he has driven on Hankook rubber only once at Monte Carlo.
“It’s easy to forget, we had so much knowledge of the tires we were using before Hankook. We’d done thousands of kilometers on them in all conditions. We’re trying to rebuild that knowledge base with very limited testing available to us. We don’t have a second team, so we have to use what’s available to us,” Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley explained to DirtFish.
“The Rally2 car is a very useful tool in that direction. Yes, it’s very different from the Rally1 car, but we’re not looking for the ultimate, ultimate performance. When it comes to testing the tires for Monte Carlo, we’re looking to understand where the trends are; we’re looking to understand where the periphery of the choices are,” Wheatley added.
Rally Monte Carlo will be contested on 22–25 January.
