Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul is looking to solve the issues the team have been having with their ‘peaky’ i20 N car in this season’s World Rally Championship.
The team have won three rallies so far in the WRC in 2024, with Thierry Neuville, Esapekka Lappi and Ott Tanak winning one each in Monaco, Sweden and Sardinia respectively.
Neuville currently leads the championship by 27 points over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Sebastien Ogier, having achieved top-five finishes in all but two of the nine rallies so far this season, finishing on the podium four times.
Tanak is third behind Ogier having crashed out at Rally Finland at Stage three in what was a difficult weekend for the Korean manufacturer.
And speaking with Autosport, Abiteboul is looking to address the issues seen with his car ahead of the 2025 season.
Cyril Abiteboul reveals Hyundai have upgrade tests planned to solve their car problems
Despite extending their lead over Toyota in the Manufacturers’ championship by 20 points after Rally Finland, Hyundai’s drivers struggled with the i20 N.
The course at Jyvaskyla is notoriously challenging and its return to the calendar after seven years, mostly through the WRC introducing virtual chicanes at Rally Finland, brought about problems for Neuville and Lappi.
Belgian Neuville could only finish in second place, with both Hyundai drivers having handling issues and could not achieve ultimate performance.
Ogier benefitted from Hyundai’s difficulties and his teammate Kalle Rovanpera’s retirement after he collided with a rock on Stage 19 to win his third rally of the year for Toyota.
Abiteboul is fully aware of the issues with his team’s ‘peaky’ WRC car and has stated that Hyundai will run tests of next year’s upgrades to try and solve their problems with their 2024 machine.
“We have a car that is suffering two things, first it is quite peaky,” he said.
“The operating window of whatever set up is very narrow and when we have stable condition, it can be all good, all nice, from Thursday shakedown to Sunday evening, but in a rally like this one where the conditions are almost changing by corner, it doesn’t work. It simply does not work.
“In slippery conditions, we are not quite as stable as [the] benchmark, which for me is the Toyota. I think it’s clear that we’ve got some work to do again.
“First, finding a wider operating window and secondly, work on low grip conditions. Some of that we are trying to address is in what we have in the pipeline for next year’s car, but some of that is still not totally addressed, but we are making big efforts.
“We have got some tests that are planned in order to try to bring some solution to those problems.”
Hyundai are yet to confirm their driver line-up for 2025
As the team sets their sights on next year’s WRC campaign, Hyundai are looking at their options for their driver line-up.
Championship leader Neuville is out of contract at the end of the season, while the Korean manufacturer have the option to extend Tanak’s deal.
Neuville has been with the team since 2018 and in that time has finished runner-up in the standings in 2018 and 2019 and third place for three consecutive seasons from 2021 to 2023.
Tanak re-joined the team from Ford at the start of the season and has endured a miserable campaign with several accidents and mistakes plaguing the Estonian’s title bid. But Abiteboul has said it would be ‘pretty natural’ for Hyundai to extend Tanak’s contract beyond this season.