The sporting director of Hyundai Motorsport, Andrew Wheatley, says that his team came to Croatia without confidence and did not expect that they would lead the rally, but admits that it is harder now to swallow the fact that they lost a certain win considering Thierry Neuville's lead before the start of the Powerstage.
Hyundai Motorsport managed to decrease its gap from Toyota to 43 points after the end of Safari Rally Kenya as the Japanese team was dominant on the first three rounds of this year's championship. However, the team arrived at Croatia without expectations of winning this event as the i20N Rally1 is under in terms of performance compared to the GR Yaris Rally1. After Oliver Solberg's and Elfyn Evans's retirements on Friday morning, Thierry Neuville found himself fighting for the lead of Croatia Rally with Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta. In fact, the Belgian managed to be the fastest driver in three stages during last weekend and to stay out in trouble in Stage 14 where Pajari and Katsuta got punctures. His rivals' problems promoted him to the first place on the overall classification and ended his Saturday being the rally leader of the event. He kept leading the fourth WRC round on the first three Sunday stages and his aim was not to push for the SuperSunday and the Powerstage points as he wanted to deliver the first win of the season for Hyundai Motorsport. In Powerstage, Neuville went off the road, as he misjudged the grip, and probably hit a road sign resulting in damaging the front right suspension of his i20N. He and Martijn Wydaeghe retired after the end of Powerstage where they had a one-minute lead over the second Katsuta before the start of that stage. At the end of Croatia Rally, Toyota managed to increase its championship lead over Hyundai to 77 points and to have four drivers inside the top four while Adrien Fourmaux sits in fifth place as the top driver for Hyundai and separates the Toyota quartet from the sixth Sebastien Ogier.
"The whole team will feel what happened today because of the hard work that everyone has done this year – it was tough", Wheatley said after the end of Croatia Rally.
"Thierry and Martijn had done all the hard work they needed to do, came to the final stage with a minute lead, and with a little bit of bad luck this is now the position that we find ourselves in.
"We arrived here this weekend without a huge amount of confidence, and step-by-step everybody has done an incredible amount of work to put ourselves in a place where we thought we would find success.
"We have to be clear – Hayden has now finished on the podium, which is a great result, but unfortunately the win was not to be.
"It’s not the disappointment that kills you, it’s the hope.
"We now need to reset and try to go again.
"Tonight we can sit back and lick our wounds a bit, but tomorrow we need to start again.
"We made our own luck on Friday and Saturday, but what we gained there, we lost on Sunday.
"This one is a hard one to take for everybody in the team".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
Post a Comment