Hyundai WRT

According to the latest rumours/news they will... Rally2

https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/hyund...-car-for-2027/

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Originally Posted by Andre Oliveira

Sordo 5 rallies

Spain, Portugal, Greece, Paraguay and Italy

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While not really a surprise it does make one wonder who will do the tarmac.

Paddon has no recent or historical decent tarmac form. Lappi is therefore most likely, he does not have any good results either, but likely can end up around Katsuka if ordered not to push. (If he pushes on tarmac it tends to end badly).

The driver ending up to do the tarmac-rounds ending up as mikkelsen, or loeb, no good results.

Sent fra min SM-S901B via Tapatalk

Obviously after that (in Dirtfish words) "doomed to fail" tarmac focused part program he had last year I do not think they had a long line of drivers who wanted to try that.

Which is why I was expecting that the tarmac rounds would get split differently next year (and that there will be only two drivers sharing seat). Doesn't look like that yet, with Sordo not doing any.

Hopefully Paddon did not agree to tarmac-focused suicide run only.

Paddon has had some decent tarmac performances in ERC (2nd Canarias 2023, 1st Ceredigion 2024) but of course that was in the Rally2 car.

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Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC

Abiteboul explains why it went wrong for them in 2025:

"We spent a winter finally working on this new car. And we did not work on three new elements that appeared: the end of the hybrid, the change of tyres and the change of fuel. All our efforts, our focus, our test days and our jokers went into this new car and not into these three elements, which changed things quite a lot and penalised us in the end. We arrived in Monte Carlo not at all prepared for how the Hankooks work on tarmac because we had been working on other things”

https://rallyjournal.com/a-big-speac...t-badly-wrong/

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I came across this quote from pre-Monte 2025....

Loriaux doesn't see any problem with the late switch to non-hybrid or the need for extra testing...

“I don’t think we need to test more without hybrid,” he said. “If anything, in some ways it’s easier without hybrid. For sure, the car is less complicated and the settings are easier, so I wouldn’t say we need more test days if we take out the hybrid."

Hayden Paddon's lecture on how to drive a rally car :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3Vne7kDsgE

Hyundai doesn’t want to introduce us it’s “new” livery for 2026?

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Originally Posted by Eli

Hyundai doesn’t want to introduce us it’s “new” livery for 2026?

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Tehy have just announced the swap from Alpinestrs to Sparco, so I guess they needed to do that before releasing pics of the car and drivers to have all the sponsors already announced.

Hyundai i20 Rally1 2026 livery ?

Hyundai Motorsport @HMSGOfficial

Same but different...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-jyADvX...pg&name=medium