Why there's no easy fix for Hyundai's operational Achilles Heel

Tyre strategy was the major talking point in the World Rally Championship’s first trip to Croatia last weekend, when Hyundai’s potential pace was stymied by curious choices made in the service park.

Ott Tanak, the team’s dominant winner on February’s Arctic Rally, spent most of the event drifting at a pace far short of the podium positions, while Thierry Neuville dropped out of the lead and lost more than half a minute on the second morning whilst driving on entirely the wrong rubber.

Thus for the second time in the three rallies held so far this year, Toyota was able to secure a 1-2 at the finish, its advantage in the all-important manufacturers’ standings extended to 27 points at the quarter-championship mark. On both occasions, the difference between the Hyundai and Toyota has lain in their tyre choices.

Indeed, whenever the road conditions are marginal, the current form of all three teams in the WRC has been so consistent through 2020-21 that you can pretty well set your watches by them.

M-Sport is the squad that best conjures time out of rubber whenever there is an opportunity, such as fitting full snow tyres to Esapekka Lappi’s car to cope with standing water on last season’s final round at Monza… and briefly stealing the overall lead as a result.

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

Toyota enjoys a significantly bigger budget than M-Sport, but while its Yaris WRCs often appear with enticing new aero details (such as the ‘shark fin’ strakes that crowned the front wheel arches in Croatia), the basics are unerringly covered as well. At service after service from the rock-strewn gravel of Turkey, through the lottery of Monte Carlo to the ever-changing asphalt of Croatia, it consistently picks the right compound for the conditions.

It is in matching Toyota’s ability to execute an event that Hyundai falls short. Its cars and drivers are clearly capable, but where M-Sport is inspired and Toyota is reliable, the Alzenau-based team perennially gets itself in a knot. In Monte Carlo back in January, for example, Neuville spent an unpleasant Friday morning trying to keep his car straight while running just one studded tyre.

“We did a very stupid tyre choice,” said team principal Andrea Adamo. “But it’s my job to avoid this kind of mistake. I was not able to avoid, so in the end it is my mistake.”

On the snow of Lapland’s Arctic Rally a month later, there was only ever one choice to make: full studs. Tanak and Hyundai duly stormed to victory on an event that the form book declared would be a Toyota whitewash. But then came Croatia, which arguably left Hyundai more cruelly exposed than ever.

"When there has been a difficult tyre choice we were able to pick the wrong one. So it’s something in the organisation I set up that doesn’t work. I take responsibility for it" Andrea Adamo

On the first day, Friday, skies were blue but the asphalt was green. After a cold, wet week the surface temperatures were also fairly low. The Toyotas went out shod with four soft tyres each to maximise available grip, with two of the hard compound tyres in case temperatures spiked before the mid-day service. In contrast, Hyundai sent Neuville out with four hard tyres and two softs in the boot, while Tanak had no soft rubber with him at all.

Pre-event points leader Kalle Rovanpera’s early exit handed Neuville the prime road position, with minimal dirt and gravel on the asphalt beneath him that probably flattered his tyre choice. Meanwhile back in fourth on the road and in a far less advantageous road position, Tanak was powerless to avoid dropping 25 seconds off the pace. Craig Breen, in the third car, was at that stage too far off the pace for tyre choice to be the main concern.

Even before the service halt, and presumably with the airwaves turning blue between the Hyundai crews and their base camp, Adamo came out to get ahead of the curve. The Italian declared: “We decided to split the choice between the three crews, also to their request, and to try to spread the eggs in different nests...”

Andrea Adamo, Team principal Hyundai Motorsport

Photo by: Vincent Thuillier / Hyundai Motorsport

When the crews came out to repeat the stages in the afternoon, hard tyres were conspicuous by their absence and, with the correct rubber on his car, Tanak duly took a stage win right off the bat.

On Saturday the ambient temperatures were warmer still and this time both Toyota and M-Sport went for hard rubber all round, because it was only ever going to get warmer and their sweet spot was within reach. But the Hyundais only had two hard tyres each, with two softs bolted on and a third as their spare. The result was chaos: Neuville dropping more than half a minute as the life was quickly beaten out of the stickier rubber, leaving him in a battle of wills with his equipment to reach the end of each stage.

This time Adamo made no attempt to suggest that his drivers had brought misfortune upon themselves.

“From when I’m here (as principal), most of the time, when there has been a difficult tyre choice we were able to pick the wrong one,” he said. “So it’s something in the organisation I set up that doesn’t work. I take responsibility for it, and for which I had better move my ass and solve it.”

Solving the weakest spot in Hyundai’s armour is not doubt the key factor in getting Adamo’s 2021 title bid back on track, but it will only become more important when the next generation of WRC cars take over in 2022. Soon there will be reduced scope for aero and technical innovation paired with an increased level of common components - from the basic structure of the cars to their hybrid powertrain - which will further magnify every nuance in the team’s performance.

How Adamo responds to the crisis in Croatia will therefore have a huge ripple effect over the next two to three years, and he spent most of the weekend crunching data in the team’s service area to try and find his way through the maze.

“If you sum up just the afternoon stage times, you have Ogier, Evans and Tanak in two tenths and, okay, Thierry a bit faster,” he said after evaluating Hyundai and Toyota’s relative performance. “In this moment you have to be perfect to win the race but [also] along the championship because I think that when the level of competitiveness is so high, these silly mistakes are the things that will drive the result in the end.”

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

Looking at Adamo’s troubles from the opposite end of the telescope, Autosport spoke to Toyota’s team principal Jari-Matti Latvala to gain some understanding of how his team manages to get this sort of call right so often.

There are an almost infinite number of variables into the equations through which Adamo must now work. Do the problems lie within the individuals? In their relationships and communication? In their skill sets? In the equipment?

“To get the tyres correct you need a team which is starting, of course, from the meteo guys on the stages and then the meteorologist who is in with us reading the radars and the weather during the event,” he said. “And then of course the safety crews, the gravel crews, and then the tyre team who has the experience of the tyres.”

That puts an almost infinite number of variables into the equations through which Adamo must now work. Do the problems lie within the individuals? In their relationships and communication? In their skill sets? In the equipment?

One of his team’s most notable successes came on the 2020 Monte Carlo Rally, when an off-duty Dani Sordo joined the safety crew for Neuville and played a key role in helping him to victory. That might be a good clue.

At Toyota, experienced drivers abound in getting the right information back to base, including double European champion and sometime WRC regular Simon Jean-Joseph, it's regular test driver Juho Hanninen plus 1996 British champion Gwyndaf Evans.

Having the right boots on the ground would appear to be the priority, but as someone who, only last year, still felt he had a tilt at the drivers’ title left in him, Latvala knows where the ultimate responsibility lies.

“Eventually, always, the decision of the tyres is the driver’s - it is the driver who will decide it," he said. "But it is the information that you gather with the team, and also with the engineers, that you provide [for them] and it is very, very important that you provide the correct information to get it right.”

Good luck, Mr. Adamo…

Craig Breen, Paul Nagle, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport