How Hyundai is shaping up to dethrone Toyota as WRC's conqueror

Pressure is not confined to tyres at Hyundai Motorsport ahead of the 2024 World Rally Championship. The South Korean marque boasts an experienced new line-up of drivers, who are all proven as rally winners, so expectation levels are high as it aims to break Toyota’s stranglehold on the series.

Given the investment to lure 2019 world champion Ott Tanak back to the fold after a year at M-Sport, while adding three-time rally winner Andreas Mikkelsen to its pool of drivers for its third car, there is no hiding from the fact that it’s time to deliver. And that’s something that is welcomed by its leader Cyril Abiteboul.

“The pressure will be higher for sure, but that is also what is making it exciting,” smiles the Frenchman. “An extra amount of pressure is driving us to do what we do. I welcome it.

“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. Also, given the nature of the 2024 season, we believe we can fight for the drivers’ title.”

For the past three years, Hyundai has witnessed rival Toyota sweep all before it. A hat-trick of WRC drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles has established the Japanese marque as the team to beat. While Hyundai’s 2019 and 2020 manufacturers’ titles seem a long time ago now, there is every reason to believe the sky-blue-and-orange cars can break Toyota’s hold this year. More importantly, the reasons not to succeed for a team Abiteboul believes has the biggest budget in the WRC are running out.

This is thanks to a methodical strategy being carried out by the former Renault Formula 1 boss, who was hired last year to turn around the team’s fortunes. Abiteboul is working through a carefully constructed plan of changes designed to bring success.

“There’s no silver bullet in motorsport,” he points out. “I can share with you that I have a tracker of all the organisational changes I want to make, and it’s something like 28 lines in my table.”

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

Abiteboul has overseen plenty of change at Hyundai since his arrival to the service park, although admits he's not got as far as he'd like

So how many of these changes has Abiteboul achieved in his 12 months in charge?

“Not enough actually, it’s probably in the region of five,” he answers. “It’s all about people and organisation, and in the past I think there was too much of a feeling that it was all about money.

“We probably have the biggest budget in rallying but our performance shows that it’s not just about money. I want to move slightly in the direction of looking after people and organisation, and not just that we have financial resources available.”

Those five changes have already significantly strengthened Hyundai to a point where it should be able to push Toyota much harder in 2024. The first task completed was to shore up the team’s technical side.

"There are still some things that we need to align – the car is the elephant in the room. The drivers are important, but the car is as well" Cyril Abiteboul

Renowned WRC engineer Christian Loriaux was moved from a consultant role to become WRC programme manager, and the team’s 2022 interim leader Julien Moncet was moved back to his role as powertrain boss. Francois-Xavier Demaison, one of the gurus behind the all-conquering Volkswagen Polo WRC car from 2013-16 and a former Williams F1 employee, was snapped up to fill the critical technical director role.

With the core team structure in place, Abiteboul has now assembled arguably the strongest and most experienced driver line-up. Tanak has rejoined five-time title runner-up Thierry Neuville, who scored Hyundai’s two wins last year. The pair will be supported by a third car shared between Esapekka Lappi (who moves to a part-time role), the championship’s safest pair of hands belonging to veteran Dani Sordo, and reigning WRC2 champion Mikkelsen – the Norwegian rejoins the top flight for the first time since leaving Hyundai at the end of 2019.

So Abiteboul can comfortably remove the ‘improve technical team’ and ‘strengthen driver line-up’ bullet points from his table. The next target is to enhance the i20 N Rally1, which appears to be the final piece of the jigsaw. But this is not a simple job, because WRC Rally1 regulations are already strict as to what teams can alter/improve on their cars.

Photo by: Hyundai

The Hyundai WRC factory is a hive of activity leading up to the start of the season, and now has the technical direction it craves

On top of that, significant upgrades require teams to use limited homologation jokers to make them a reality. Testing is restricted to 21 pre-event tests for manufacturer teams – seven per driver – so the premium on ensuring an upgrade is worth spending a joker upon is high. Hyundai has used jokers to improve the reliability of its 2024 i20 N, which has also undergone a weight-saving programme over the off-season.

“There are still some things that we need to align – the car is the elephant in the room,” Abiteboul states. “The drivers are important, but the car is as well. We are doing one step for sure with the homologation joker, but we need to do more of these steps in order to give the guys the car they really need to fight for the manufacturer championship.

“It’s 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.”

Extracting the best from the i20 N will fall under the remit of the 270 staff employed at the team’s Alzenau factory in Germany – a facility Autosport was invited to visit during the off-season. For a powerhouse the size of Hyundai, locating its vast motorsport base in a small traditional Bavarian town with a population of 19,000 might seem strange. But the reason for setting up camp here is its proximity to Hyundai Motor Europe’s headquarters in nearby Frankfurt, which coincidentally boasts Germany’s largest community of expat Koreans (approximately 5,300) and a hub of firms from the nation, including tech giant Samsung.

Ever since Hyundai elected to rejoin the WRC in 2014, the team has been based in a rented workshop that used to be occupied by a solar panel firm. In the past decade this has doubled in size to a vast 16,000 square metre facility where Hyundai’s WRC machines are designed and constructed, alongside its customer rallying and TCR business.

It’s obvious that the WRC is Hyundai Motorsport’s core business; the reception area is dominated by a glitzy trophy cabinet featuring its most prized WRC silverware. The rally theme continues with a large electronic board counting down the months, days and hours to the next rally, just like the timing screens hanging above the cars during WRC events that notify mechanics of the time remaining during services. The scale of the facility is difficult to comprehend until seen first-hand, but according to Abiteboul there is a need for even more space.

“It’s very much what we need in terms of place and set-up and space, but actually despite the size we are already short of space in certain locations,” he reckons. “It’s typical motorsport – you always want more, and if we had a bigger place we would be struggling for space. I think the one thing that we need to look at, once we have a view for the future regulations in 2027, is the sort of capacity that we need to deliver.”

Photo by: Hyundai

Hyundai's vast Alzenau factory also houses its TCR effort alongside WRC flagship

What is pertinent is that Hyundai clearly cares about its history and its own motorsport journey. There is a selection of its cars in the customer racing workshop, including examples from its first unsuccessful foray into the WRC, represented by the Motor Sport Developments-run Hyundai Coupe F2 car (1998-99) and the Accent WRC (2000-03). These reminders of the past represent Hyundai’s policy of keeping a working example of every car it has produced.

Adjacent to this is a similarly large workshop devoted solely to the WRC team. It’s here where the i20 Ns are designed, constructed, fettled, repaired and prepped to do battle in the world’s harshest terrains. Again, this constant theme of history is ever-present.

The pristine working bays are plastered with images from past rallies and triumphs. But this is juxtaposed by a poignant reminder of the human side of this business and the loss the team suffered last year. In the middle of the workshop hangs a bonnet overlooking all the bays. It’s from one of the two i20 Ns that featured a memorial tri-colour livery in Croatia last year, paying tribute to talented Irishman Craig Breen, a much-loved member of this team, whose life was tragically cut short in a testing crash.

This ingenious electronic contraption resembles something conceived by Wallace and Gromit, but it’s essentially a smart elevator that can retrieve components. Originally it was used to retrieve solar panels and bring them to the workshop floor

The bonnet hangs above a busy workshop that is divided into several sections. One portion is allocated to recce cars and the test team, the WRC event team is situated adjacent, while on the far side is the powertrain/engine workshop – home to 40-50 staff. It is here where engines and gearboxes are built – a process that can take three weeks from scratch.

The department also houses damper and engine dynos where suspension and power units are rigorously tested. The two engine dynos can put power units and hybrid systems through the most extreme of tests, mimicking temperatures from the freezing cold of Sweden to the heat and humidity of Sardinia and Kenya. No stone is left unturned in this process to produce the perfect engine. An example of a steering wheel from a WRC car is connected to the dyno software to recreate exactly the settings and engine maps a driver would select during certain events at the touch of a button.

But it’s back in the main workshop area where the cars are assembled, and Hyundai can thank the building’s previous occupants for a piece of technology that saves mechanics a whole heap of time. It is simply called the Megamat, and there are three of them.

This ingenious electronic contraption resembles something conceived by Wallace and Gromit, but it’s essentially a smart elevator that can retrieve components. Originally it was used to retrieve solar panels and bring them to the workshop floor from an 11-metre-high storage room in the building.

Photo by: Hyundai

Bonnet overlooking all the bays is from one of the i20 Ns that featured a memorial tri-colour livery in Croatia last year, paying tribute to the late Breen

Hyundai has replaced solar panels by storing a plethora of components from lights, screws, washers and everything in between in this vertical Aladdin’s cave. A mechanic simply keys into the Megamat what he requires, and within seconds this device has gathered the items from the storage area and they are placed on a tray to collect. There is no need to walk to a storage department, saving time and energy when building or repairing cars.

The tour is completed by a walk through the design office, where engineers sit behind their computer screens poring over data while using the latest CAD software to design components – and ultimately cars – that Hyundai hopes will have an edge over their rivals. And this highlights the crux of its quest for glory.

All the ingredients have been assembled. Now, as Abiteboul says, it’s time to deliver: “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.”

Photo by: Hyundai

Hyundai's respect for its history and motorsport journey is made clear by the display of cars that includes the MSD-built Accent