Esapekka Lappi says that his being flat-out for three consecutive days was a big step forward on his performance level and believes that Hyundai will improve further the i20N during the pre-event test for Rally Finland.
The Finn driver was fighting with Elfyn Evans for the third place of Rally Estonia from Friday to Sunday and managed to win this battle securing his fourth podium of the season. The only problem he faced during the weekend was when he lost the hybrid boost after a landing in SS2 blaming himself for this problem while it must be mentioned that he and Evans were jointly leading the event after SS1.
It is noteworthy that Hyundai was struggling on fast gravel rallies, such as Rally Estonia, in the past, but this time two Hyundai drivers finished at the top three with Thierry Neuville being unable to follow Kalle Rovanpera's pace on Saturday and Sunday, so he completed the rally behind the championship leader. The Belgian gave a clue about what Hyundai changed to the i20N for this event which was related to the dampers, but EP gave more details saying that there were big changes to the front and rear geometry, the brakes and the rear wing apart from what his teammate stated.
"For sure it was a very easy handling car all the weekend", Lappi said.
"Otherwise I think you can’t do as consistent throughout the three days as what we did.
"And yeah, it’s the first time for me ever that I’ve done three days flat-out.
"Normally always the rally ends on Friday or Saturday, the fights are ending, and then it’s nothing to fight for on Sunday except the powerstage.
"But now it didn’t happen, so I also need to be pleased with that and we could do without the mistakes on all three days on such a high-speed rally.
"So this is also a step again forward on my performance level".
Finally, he said on Sunday: "My test day is the day after tomorrow, so it’s coming quite soon.
"Let’s say I know where the problem is at the moment, where we are losing.
"We have a very good engineering team who can analyze the things very quickly throughout the weekend: already in the afternoon, or in the evening from that day.
"So we know what we should do.
"For sure we try to do improvements on Tuesday.
"And yeah, it’s not impossible – as we saw last year that Hyundai was a bit lost in this rally last year, and then they won in Finland.
"So it is possible to make a turnover on the spot, but let’s see can we do it this year".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
Post a Comment