Challenging weekend for all the crews

Hyundai Motorsport has completed a weekend to forget at Rally Islas Canarias, the fourth round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) season, with its crews in fifth, sixth and seventh.

The 18-stage event concluded with five final tests: two runs of Agüimes-Santa Lucia (SS14/17, 14.97km) and Maspalomas (SS15/18, 13.47km), with one visit to Costa Canaria (SS16, 1.50km) splitting the two loops. Crews had no mid-day service or tyre fitting zones during Sunday, with just one morning service to prepare their cars for the day.

Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria salvaged fifth place on Sunday, as well as fifth in the Super Sunday standings to claim three additional points. A joint stage win with Sebastien Ogier on SS16 and fourth fastest in the Power Stage were small highlights of an otherwise gruelling rally for the French Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team crew.

Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja took to Sunday’s stages with the spare engine after a change in Saturday’s evening service. However, the Estonians registered only one top-five stage time on Sunday in SS17, and had to settle for sixth overall. Tänak is now fifth in the standings, just two points behind team-mate Thierry Neuville.

Neuville and co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe secured their second top-three stage time on SS15, the dress rehearsal for the Power Stage. The Belgians were running in fourth in the Super Sunday standings when disaster struck on the rally’s penultimate stage. A puncture on SS17 resulted in Neuville dropping behind team-mate Tänak in the overall order, and he finished the event in seventh. The Belgian is now third in the drivers’ standings.

After its disappointing performance on tarmac, Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team will quickly turn its attentions to Rally de Portugal next month. The team expects to return to form at the event, which will mark the first of seven consecutive gravel rallies, as it targets regaining important ground in the championship fights.

Crew Notes: Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (#16 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

• Joint stage victory on SS16 Costa Canaria
• Claimed three additional points from Super Sunday and Power Stage

Fourmaux said: “While there are some positives from the weekend, such as that amazing final stage and winning our inter-team battle, for sure it is not what we wanted. Sometimes in difficult rallies like this you can learn a lot and take steps forward for the future – I’m confident in the team that we can do that. We managed to take some points, which is good, but we will keep pushing to come back stronger.”

Crew Notes: Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (#8 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

• Estonian crew finish in sixth place
• Scored fifth fastest time on SS17

Tänak said: “It’s difficult to find the words to describe such a demanding weekend. I think it’s the worst we’ve been across all three crews, with none of us able to compete at the front. It is tricky when it is hot, as I get more understeer, and when the car is not working I really struggled to push. We didn’t do our homework and we weren’t prepared for this event, and Toyota set the bar very high – it was a great job from them.”

Crew Notes: Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (#1 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

• Top-three stage time on SS15 Maspalomas 1
• Fifth fastest on Power Stage secured one bonus point

Neuville said: “It hasn’t been a good weekend for us. We struggled a lot, and even though we were working hard to fix the situation, everything we tried didn’t seem to work. We still need to put our finger on what has caused these issues for us and come back stronger. Nevertheless, the team kept fighting despite all our struggles; we weren’t lucky with the puncture today, otherwise we might have got a reasonable result. We expected much more from this weekend, and we didn’t get it.”

Hyundai Motorsport Technical Director François-Xavier Demaison said:

“Rally Islas Canarias has been a difficult rally for us. It became an intensive test session for us where we tried a lot of different things on the car. We kept pushing today but it was very tough against the four Toyotas, who were very fast. On tough weekends like this, you learn a lot of very interesting things which we believe will not only unlock performance for us on tarmac, but on gravel as well. We will now take everything we have learned from these setbacks to come back stronger at the next events.”

Next rally

• The 2025 FIA WRC returns to gravel for the fifth round of the 2025 FIA WRC championship, Rally de Portugal, taking place 15-18 May