Thierry Neuville to be Hyundai Motorsports lead driver from 2014 Press release
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Current state? Are the cars slower or what? No, itīs just that Seb O is so much faster driver. Nothing wrong with Ford and Citroen otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
Btw I wish TN good luck in new car. Letīs hope he can fight for top three next year. If nothing unexpected happens with the I20īs performance (we havenīt seen it compared to the others) I do believe he will.
I wonder how many years is this multi year deal...
why they do not mention it
3Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
so the rotating chairs will now begin...
It is very interesting what "ifs" are written in contract ;)
I think it was somehow an expected choice from Neuville. Hyundai has come a long way in build and overall quality of their products, so I expect that to reflect in their motorsport division aswell.
Plus he's a young guy surely looking to build a stable life, so the money obviously had a say in it. I dont know what offer Wilson had in the table but for sure it wasn't better.
I don' t see that anywhere, at least officiallyQuote:
Originally Posted by SlowSon
Which other driver s to join him.
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The Polo is faster though... JML proves this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rallyper
[quote=Fast Eddie WRC]The Polo is faster though... JML proves this.[/quote:1pjblvxc]Quote:
Originally Posted by Rallyper
Iīve also pointed that out, being ruled out by many members on this forum. Right, Mirek? :)
Anyhow, I donīt think the difference is that big you could talk about Ford and Citroens current state...
I don't remember the context in which we discussed that. Anyway I think it's not good to simplify the issues to the simple sentence "car A is faster than car B". In my opinion it is much more complex in reality. It's the combination of a car and a crew and mainly their confidence in the car. I don't believe that any of recent WRC cars is so much better than others (with the exception of Mini). I think that we saw that some drivers are fast in all cars, some are slower in all cars. Usually the fans of those slower blame the car of their hero to slow him down and blame the car of the faster driver to give them advantage :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rallyper
trueQuote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
[quote=Fast Eddie WRC][/quote:2mz4q9cx]Quote:
Originally Posted by Rallyper
Really? If we are going to make assumptions I rather thought that the performances of JML and Mikko since leaving M-Sport showed that maybe the Ford wasn't as bad as we all thought? BTW I'm not implying that either car is better, I'm just querying how you worked that out?
Anyhow like Mirek says it is not that simple. For example I don't believe Mikko is as bad as he has shown this year and I don't think that Neuville's great speed this year proves the Ford is faster than the Citroen either.
Really? If we are going to make assumptions I rather thought that the performances of JML and Mikko since leaving M-Sport showed that maybe the Ford wasn't as bad as we all thought? BTW I'm not implying that either car is better, I'm just querying how you worked that out?
Anyhow like Mirek says it is not that simple. For example I don't believe Mikko is as bad as he has shown this year and I don't think that Neuville's great speed this year proves the Ford is faster than the Citroen either.[/quote]
This is very true , at times Neuville was on a par with the Polo's and the Citroen just couldnt become a bad car over night , but did i read somewhere that when Neuville was driving the Citroen he found it nervous ?
At least it would give continuity to the testing & development of the car. Continuing developing of the current model and a new model coming in 2015, I think theres a lot of testing although Hyundai could most certainly use most of the parts in the new model.Quote:
Originally Posted by RS
Hyundai could of course hire Juho, Bryan & Chris to be test drivers only but I think theyre keen to test their setups in real action and it could give some hints in which direction to go.
Naturally Thierry would also do testing and development.
A new model Hyundai in 2015... what is this likely to be ?
Seems strange to do all the work on the i20 then start again...
Second generation of i20 is due at the end of 2014.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
the basics of the 2014 model was made by the koreans because the other things were not sorted yetQuote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
the 2015 and forward will be solely from the new french team, which will also act like partner of Hyundai for tuning other road vehicles
They Hyundai 'business' plan is behind this. It is about selling cars. Yes they will do their best to be competitive.
Hyundai want a motorsport division to sell cars, built on similar lines to Nismo. Hyundai Australia said they wanted to have something along the lines of the Clio, Megane, Focus ST, in their stable within 5 years.
Having drivers that young male buyers can identify with is really important.
Letīs hope Mitsu and Subaru gets this.Quote:
Originally Posted by litifeta
Perfectly logical decision by Neuville, besides VW, Hyundai is the only current manufacturer with a long term plan for WRC.
I agree. Seems the right choice for him. May be not for next year, but for next ones it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by COD
It looks to me that WRC has chosen its future path, and will now be the playground / shopwindow of the big players, the 70 to 80M club, maybe Toyota can join the party. On a serious note, I dont think this bodes too well for MSport after 2014 when the cars require homologation, similar to the PSA Group, maybe these two stalwarts of the WRC car era will go the way of Lancia. I would have liked to see R5 or R5 plus as the top car with Ford, Citroen, Peugeot, Opel, FIAT etc, maybe Skoda representing VW Group and Hyundai entering WRC.
Budgets of 70-80M probably mean Ford wont come back, and PSA will be out of the door end of 2014.
Who knows R5 in ERC and customers is where Ford MSport will end up?
Guys its not all about the cars. Its the drivers.. Finland said it all. Jarkko nikara in a mini was pretty fast.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
I'm sure there will be a lot of carry over between the cars, this way they'll be planning to hit the ground running when the new car arrives
I guess having a totally fresh homologation after just one year will be an advantage too as they can fix any fundamental problems with the first car which they otherwise would not be able to.
Hyundai is the only current manufacturer with a long term plan for WRC.Quote:
Originally Posted by COD
First I want to see this!! :hmph:
Plans can change so even existence of long term plans guarantee nothing. They had long-term plans with four seasons of Accent WRC (and even longer if Coupe Kit Car is included). After all, Toyota was back only for two years.
Times has changed. From a Korean underdog they became one of the biggest and richest car manufacturers in the world. Now they are in a direct marketing battle with VAG, Toyota or PSA and they can not afford to run away like sick dogs. Their budget is virtually unlimited, they hired best available people, built a huge new facility, there are rumors they even bought some military area in Germany for having secret tests etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by jonkka
Actually what they do now is exactly same what VW did with the only exception in fact that they have no Fabia S2000 to use for testing so they decided to build a test car for 2014 which may have nothing common with the real 2015 WRC car.
In all aspects they look extremely serious. In other words if this is not serious approach what is?
I'd say they're deadly serious. Some people are still thinking of the former effort with MSD, and with the amateur video released last year - and that is blinding them, despite the evidence. Signing the hottest young driver, having a proper test programme, etc
I'm looking forward to seeing them debut, but 2015 is the year for them. Next year is their 'VW 2012', albeit in the top category, rather than with a S2000 Fabia.
I think their competitiveness next year will surprise many people.
I want see Neuville testing :bounce:
Depending on MW, and his goodwill, you might have to wait until January the first...Quote:
Originally Posted by Andre Oliveira
Malcolm Wilson is a good guy, and he have more things to worry about.
They have a huge testing facility in Australia. And that's a factQuote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
So they can quietly avoid the limit of testing for registered teams?
There's no limit for testing on private grounds I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by SlowSon
That's not really practical for team based in Germany ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by litifeta