The world champion is concerned by Toyota's domination over Hyundai
Photography by Hyundai
Words by Alasdair Lindsay, Head of Digital Strategy
Thierry Neuville has sounded the alarm over Hyundai’s performance deficit to Toyota after Rally Chile, saying its lack of pace during the World Rally Championship’s South American leg was “worrying”.
Hyundai had been first, second and third on Friday in Chile before Ott Tänak’s engine failed, leaving it just 1-2 with Adrien Fourmaux leading. But the quickest Hyundai driver (Fourmaux) was 33.6s off the pace on Saturday; Neuville 47.5s down.
The world champion suggested Hyundai’s lack of understanding of why Toyota was able to rapidly pull away on that leg was problematic.
Aasked what the root cause of Hyundai’s pace deficit towards the end of Rally Chile was, Neuville told DirtFish: “If we would know, I think we would have done something since a while [ago]. I don’t know. They are just stronger.
“It’s definitely worrying. It’s not frustrating anymore, it’s worrying. We need to dig deeper for sure, but we are trying. We don’t seem to find it.
“We had enormous speed in Estonia, we had great speed in Finland,” he added. “We came here to two rallies [in South America] where usually we are fast, or faster at least, and we are not. So don’t ask me why, I don’t know.”
Neuville has no answer for Hyundai's pace struggle
Technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison branded Hyundai’s Chile result as “not acceptable” and admitted his team had expected better results from the South American leg.
“After Finland and Estonia where we were quite fast on fast rallies, we had big hope for these two rallies,” he told DirtFish. “But we haven’t shown the same speed, so there are plenty of lessons to learn from that and be better for next year, when we come back to these two rallies.
“It’s not acceptable for us to not score more points in these two rallies.”
A lack of understanding of the root causes for the pace deficit to Toyota had left Neuville scratching his head; Demaison followed up by saying Hyundai still had to figure out what had gone amiss in the southern hemisphere.
“We receive a lot of complaints from our drivers,” admitted Demaison. “We have a lot of homework to do now to improve the car. It will be for next year because I don’t think Saudi [Arabia] will be similar to these rallies – unless Saudi has changed quite a lot!
“Next year coming back here we’ll have to be much more ready to fight with our competitors because that was not the case this weekend.”
Fourmaux, who managed to finish on the podium in Chile, at least had some specific ideas of what went wrong for Hyundai in Chile.
“For me, I have a diff issue, that’s for sure,” said Fourmaux. “So this we need to investigate what is going wrong.
“Also we need to work a little bit on the dampers; it can also be geometry. There are many things we can work on the car, but definitely I’m not so happy with the dampers and the diff, so we need to work on it.”
Digging deeper, Fourmaux pinpointed the areas where Hyundai’s drop-off accelerated in Chile.
“What we are lacking is the grip, and especially traction on the polished gravel,” explained Fourmaux. “[It was a] hard surface, but quite damp, greasy, so this we are definitely lacking.
The i20 worked on Friday's stages, but not Saturday's
“The performance on Friday, there was no question. Ott starting first, he was leading, we were second. Everything seems to be OK. And as soon as we changed the profile of the rally, it was like, wow, they are on another level, or we dropped the performance.
“If the Chile rally was like Friday, but all around [the itinerary], it would have been fine. But no, unfortunately, it’s two rallies in one. So we need to work on this kind of area, yes.”
Neuville meanwhile was left drawing comparisons to Formula 1, suggesting that no matter what Hyundai’s drivers did, they would continue to struggle in matching Toyota for now.
“We are struggling and Toyota is on a high,” said Neuville. “But if you look, for example, we compare to Formula 1, it’s very similar. We have seen a team on a high for years before another team was able suddenly to find the speed. And on weekends like this, I always think about all those Formula 1 drivers who are in the car, which is five-tenths slower per lap.
“I’m not the only one. [Last] weekend, for sure, I was part of those who live a lot of frustrating weekends. But luckily, we are sometimes on pace. And in rallying, as many things can happen throughout the weekend, we still can get some results here and there.”
Hyundai has just one rally win this season: Acropolis Rally Greece, scored by Tänak. The last time it had multiple cars on the podium was Estonia in mid-July, with Tänak second and Neuville third.
Words:Alasdair Lindsay
Tags: François-Xavier Demaison, Hyundai, Rally Chile, Rally Chile 2025, Thierry Neuville, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date September 18, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/09/AiFWRUxL-2025CHILE_VT_121-780x520.jpg September 18, 2025
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