The team principal of Hyundai Motorsport, Cyril Abiteboul, unveils that his team's goal is to win the drivers' and the manufacturers' championship and the reason behind he chose this line-up for 2024 while he says that the i20N has been developed in two key areas.
The Alzenau-based team wants to be crowned again as WRC Manufacturer Champion and its driver to win for the first time the championship with the i20N as no one has become a WRC Champion with the i20 since the team joined World Rally Championship eleven years ago. Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak will be the leading Hyundai duo for whole season while Esapekka Lappi, Dani Sordo and Andreas Mikkelsen have been confirmed with a partial campaign with the third car. Last but not least, Hyundai worked on solving the propshaft issues after its appearance at Safari Rally of Kenya last June and was aware that the main car problem is the overweight, therefore the 2024-spec car will weigh less and will have a key upgrade for this season with the intention of the drivers not facing reliability problems again.
"This year, we want to target more frequent wins, which we hope to achieve with our refreshed driver line-up and improved Hyundai i20 N Rally1 Hybrid", Abiteboul said.
"Also, given the nature of the 2024 season, we believe we can fight for the drivers’ title.
"Ott had unfinished business with the team, and once we started talking, we realised there was a mutual interest to finish it.
"Alongside Thierry, we have two drivers capable of claiming the crown.
"In our third car, we wanted to reward crews that we felt deserved the opportunity, as all three have shown loyalty to the team as well as impressive pace and ability over the past years.
"Bringing in talent in a number of areas, such as new engineers, mechanics, weather and sporting personnel, also strengthens the overall team as we look to push forward this year.
"Success in 2024 will be our focus and we are confident that we have the right pieces in place for this to be a reality.
"In addition, we also have a plan that looks forward into 2025 and 2026 that we intend to execute".
Finally, Abiteboul reveals what changes his team has made to the i20N Rally1 for 2024 season: "It’ very clear that last year we suffered with reliability issues.
"However, we have made a key upgrade to rectify this, and it has since been through a thorough analysis and validation process.
"Another weakness of the car was its weight in certain configurations and again this has been addressed".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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