The technical director of Hyundai Motorsport, Francois-Xavier Demaison, reveals that the main target of his team is to create a more reliable car with the homologation jokers rather a more competitive car for the remaining of this season while he has detected the major problem of i20N.
The Alzenau-based team is currently suffering from reliability issues with the i20N and this can be proved by the fact that Esapekka Lappi faced three propshaft issues during Safari Rally three months ago which was caused by his driving style. The Hyundai mechanics are working hard to solve these problems, but they were not able to bring some upgrades last July where the homologations window opened, therefore the team has to wait until October to introduce some new changes to the car. Since they have not used a homologation joker on July, they can use two jokers next month (one is from July and the other from October's homologation window) which can be very helpful ahead of next year. Last but not least, both Cyril Abiteboul and Demaison believe that the main problem of i20N is the fact that the car is overweight which means that it takes more time to accelarate.
"Most of the jokers this year will be used for reliability development, to improve the reliability so there will not be much performance out of it", Demaison said.
"We don’t want to rush it, so go through the proper validation period.
"If you homologate something, it’s really bringing performance and reliability.
"We made the choice to say ‘OK this year, don’t try to rush something and use it only on two rallies’.
"Just use these two extra months and make sure that it’s an improvement.
"But we have jokers next year, two more next year, where we will push to the maximum the weight-saving and try to do the second loop of weight-saving which you normally do in the normal development period and save weight.
"And today we, it’s not a secret, we’re still overweight so it’s really painful for an engineer to be in that situation".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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