The Hyundai Motorsport workforce scored one other victory within the World Rally Championship (WRC) with Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe main the workforce to a 1-2-3 end on the 2022 EKO Acropolis Rally Greece.
The Belgians seized high spot early within the rally after 9-time world champion Sebastien Loeb needed to drop out when his pace-setting M-Sport Ford Puma had alternator failure. From that second onwards, the Hyundai duo by no means regarded again, adopted by team-mates Ott Tanak and Dani Sordo.
Neuville carried a bonus of 27.9 seconds over Tanak into the ultimate day’s 3-stage finale. Tanak managed to chop that margin by 2.9 seconds on the primary cross by way of Elefthori, however any hopes of the Estonian placing extra strain on his colleague ended when workforce orders have been deployed. The aggressive spirit was one factor, however making certain the workforce completed intact was extra vital.
With fourth-placed Elfyn Evans – driving a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 – having turbo issues on the street part earlier than the primary stage of the day, the frontrunning trio may pull a lead of greater than 3 minutes away from the sector.
Below directions to convey the vehicles to the end, all three Hyundai drivers went into security mode. Their positions within the rally remained unchanged and Neuville took the victory by 15 seconds.
“It has been a tricky season thus far and to get the victory after a really tough weekend in Belgium is a reduction,” Neuville mentioned. “An important factor is that now we have a 1-2-3 for the workforce. In spite of everything these years, we lastly obtained it and it’s a historic second for the model and the workforce. All people has labored exhausting for this and it’s a pleasant reward.”
Tanak’s rating moved him to inside 53 factors of championship chief Kalle Rovanpera, who completed greater than 17 minutes off high spot, with 3 occasions remaining. The 21-year-old Finn hit a tree on Saturday and haemorrhaged as he nursed his Yaris to service. He did, nevertheless, salvage 4 factors from the Wolf Energy Stage and will seal the crown on the subsequent spherical ought to he outscore Tanak by 8 factors.
“There was a mixture of many components contributing to these outcomes and now we have to be taught from this weekend about why issues went fallacious, and we should enhance for the long run. Elfyn’s retirement was a very disappointing method to begin the ultimate day and we’re already investigating what occurred,” mentioned Jari-Matti Latvala, Crew Principal of the Toyota GAZOO Racing World Rally Crew.
“The great factor is that we obtained Kalle and Esapekka each to the end with some actually useful factors in the direction of the Producers’ championship plus 5 extra from the Energy Stage. Kalle particularly did a very good drive there to take 4 factors for his personal championship. We nonetheless have a superb lead and now we have to look positively in the direction of Rally New Zealand,” he added.
Pierre-Louis Loubet fought again to equal his career-best consequence by ending fourth general together with his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1. Loubet briefly led and took 2 stage wins on Friday however tumbled down the standings with a broken front-left tyre the next day.
The WRC2 and WRC2 Junior winner Emil Lindholm completed in a powerful seventh place general together with his Toksport Skoda Fabia, one place forward of team-mate Nikolay Gryazin. Cypriot Alexandros Tsouloftas was set to complete simply outdoors the general high 10 and fifth in WRC2 in a Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 however got here by way of to ninth general and third in WRC2 after Yohan Rossel rolled his PH Sport Citroen C3 Rally2 into retirement on the ultimate stage.
