The WRC sporting director of Hyundai Motorsport, Andrew Wheatley, says that Thierry Neuville's car problems at Rally Japan were related to his crash at Central European Rally a month ago.
Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe had a 16G crash in Stage 15 of Central European Rally which led him to retire from the seventh position overall. The Hyundai mechanics put a new chassis to Neuville's car, but the car parts remained unchanged. The 2024 WRC Champion faced a transmission problem on the Shakedown of Rally Japan while he faced an issue with the rear diff in Stage 4. On Saturday, he was forced to retire on the road section before the start of Stage 9 as his i20N had an oil leak which was caused by a gearbox casing failure. His team managed to fix the problem and he restarted again under the SuperRally regulations, but this time he had to retire due to electrical issues before even Sunday's loop was going to start.
"I can’t tell you a lot, but what we understand at the moment is that the gearbox casing, and I don’t know how much of the gearbox, was part of the accident that took place in Central European Rally", Wheatley said.
"We don’t know because we haven’t fully assessed, but it would appear that there is some correlation between the two, so we need to fully understand the situation.
"It’s not a failure that’s been traditional, it’s something different.
"And the reality was, the big issue was they lost the oil.
"Because the shaft went back in, but we can’t do 100km without oil".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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