How Hyundai's latest self-destruction handed Evans Portugal victory

Three days of drama heralded the return of the World Rally Championship’s most charismatic event: Rally Portugal. They ended in victory for Elfyn Evans, allowing the Welshman to revitalise his 2021 campaign while his Toyota team seized the initiative in the manufacturers’ standings.

Rain had been a major feature of the recce days, and the action got under way on Friday morning with plenty of mist in the hills. Temperatures were brisk and put a premium on soft-compound rubber to exact the maximum grip from the gravel. This already meant that a joker was being played, because championship tyre supplier Pirelli was only authorised to issue each car with eight soft-compound tyres to last for the whole event, with an additional 24 hard-compound tyres.

With conditions likely to remain changeable, the form book made it hard to bet against Toyota after Hyundai had fumbled its tyre choices on two of the three events so far in 2021. During the three weeks that had been available to him since the preceding round in Croatia, Hyundai team principal Andrea Adamo needed to perform a forensic inspection of where and how his squad has repeatedly found itself exposed to error when making a judgement call on tyres.

PLUS: Why there's no easy fix for Hyundai's operational Achilles Heel

Portugal was ready to give whatever repair work that Adamo had done a rigorous test. But unusually, the Hyundai, Toyota and M-Sport Ford crews had all gone the same way: four of the soft compound, with one hard tyre as their spare.

After the first 12.35km stage at Lousa, the Hyundais stood in formation at the top of the times. Thierry Neuville held third, Dani Sordo second, and Ott Tanak led despite a half-spin and a recurrence of Hyundai’s other long-standing bugbear: an engine that stalls in low-speed corners. The three i20 Coupes were within half a second of each other, and this was testament to the commitment being shown by Neuville in particular, second on the road and therefore sweeping some of the worst gravel off the stage as he went.

Thierry Neuville, Martijn Wydaeghe, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

Only championship leader Sebastien Ogier had worse conditions to contend with as the first competitor through each stage, and Toyota’s seven-time champion could only set the eighth fastest time, 5.1s down on Tanak’s benchmark.

As a measure of how well Neuville was going, his time was equalled by Gus Greensmith’s M-Sport Fiesta, running on stages that he adores in a near-optimum eighth in the batting order.

Sordo, running ninth on the road in Hyundai’s third entry, then used his advantageous position to full effect on the next stage and swept past Tanak into a 3.2s overall lead. Another Hyundai whitewash followed on the third stage, although by now both Neuville and Tanak were deploying their hard-compound tyres on the front wheels, switching from one side to the other between stages to try to avoid beating the life out of their softs.

On the final stage of the morning loop, Toyota finally grabbed its first stage win with Kalle Rovanpera, which allowed him to leapfrog M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux into sixth overall. None of this troubled the Hyundai crews though, who by now had built an 11.7s cushion to Evans in fourth place at the halt.

“I try to not push so much because of the tyres, I don’t know what we need to use again,” said rally leader Sordo. “[When] the tyres are OK we push, when they are finished we’ll see what we do!”

Neuville’s car was retired again, but Tanak was beginning to look impregnable. Coming out after service, the Estonian recorded his 250th career stage win, but then he all but replicated Neuville’s Friday error and tore the right-rear corner off his car

Ogier remained a spectator to all this and, with half of the first day gone, the prospect of being stuck in the sweeper’s position for a second day was looming uncomfortably large. The Frenchman’s worries were only mildly alleviated by Greensmith picking up a puncture and dropping more than 52s on the third stage, and Ogier was distinctly unhappy with his set-up after the first loop.

With the same stages repeated after the break, the Hyundais carried on serenely at the front, while Ogier got to work and posted the fifth fastest time on the next stage, his best performance so far. Then, on stage six, Neuville’s time as a factor in the rally came to a juddering halt when the Belgian suffered from an over-optimistic pacenote and ran wide on a tight left-hander, ripping the right-rear corner off his Hyundai.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Neuville, attempting to three-wheel to the stage end, crawled along and threw up a veritable sandstorm behind him, into which Evans plunged after being the fastest man on the split times to that point. Much Welsh indignation was incurred as Evans was forced to sit, sightless, in Neuville’s wake, and eventually the stewards gave the Toyota man a notional time equal to the fastest on the stage. And that was Ogier’s time.

As Neuville’s car was retired, so Ogier began to conjure. While his stage win on Friday came at Evans’s expense, everything else he achieved through the afternoon - dispatching Rovanpera and closing to just 24s off the overnight lead - was straightforward brilliance.

Meanwhile at the front, there was a change in the order as Sordo’s much-abused soft tyres gave up underneath him, combined with another nasty dose of Hyundai’s low-speed engine stalling. Adding insult to injury, the right-rear tyre delaminated explosively during the drive to the day-ending superspecial at the Pista da Corsilha rallycross track in Porto, which cleaved the surrounding bodywork away with it.

So it was that the rally leader on Friday night was a rather surprised Tanak, with Evans in second place and Sordo recovering to hold third ahead of Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota) and Ogier.

Saturday dawned warmer and mistier, with Neuville donning Cinderella’s apron and dutifully clearing the road as penance for his Friday misdemeanours. Well… for a couple of stages, anyway. A mystery ailment then affected the bespectacled Wallonian’s Hyundai on a road section before the final stage of the morning loop, which obliged him to drop out of first place on the road and take the sixth starting spot.

Any suggestions that this was a little bit of gamesmanship on Hyundai’s part to get their man clear of road-sweeping duties (or at least from sweeping the road in front of the Toyotas), were answered by team principal Adamo with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

“You overestimated me: I’m a poor Italian guy, immigrant in Germany, so I’m not so smart,” he quipped. “I’m happy that you think I’m so sophisticated.”

Neuville’s car was retired again, but Tanak was beginning to look impregnable. Coming out after service, the Estonian recorded his 250th career stage win, but then he all but replicated Neuville’s Friday error and tore the right-rear corner off his car.

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

In the space of 24 hours, Hyundai’s rally had gone from a regal three-car procession at the head of the field to a single entry for Sordo, who was battling desperately to stay on terms with Evans.

Adamo’s hard work in rebuilding his squad’s fortunes lay in ruin through no fault of his own, and his instruction to Sordo was simple: win. The day-ending superspecial on the quayside in Porto illustrated how keenly Sordo had taken that message to heart. In the space of just 3.3km he lopped a full 5.6s off Evans’s advantage, leaving the Toyota man with just 10s in hand with five stages remaining. It was game on.

Behind the flying Sordo, Ogier overpowered team-mate Katsuta to take third place, while Rovanpera retired on the final road section of the day with an unspecified engine problem.

On Sunday, Sordo continued to give his all, but he was up against Evans in the sort of form that carried him to the cusp of the 2020 WRC title, and the Gwynedd star was not to be denied. Both Tanak and Neuville had soft tyres in hand, and sought to put them to use in the points-scoring powerstage, held on the iconic Fafe test, by trundling through the rest of Sunday’s route to spare their rubber.

"We perhaps weren’t the fastest crew this weekend, but we had really good pace and kept out of trouble and obviously did enough to keep Dani at bay today. It comes at a good time, so I’m happy to take this one" Elfyn Evans

For his part, Tanak also dispensed with a spare wheel, saving himself 23kg, and even swapped from a full-face helmet to an open-face to save some extra grammes. The result was five points to Estonia, with Neuville second, but it did little to mollify Adamo as Toyota stretched its advantage to 37 points in the manufacturers’ title race. Once again, the Hyundai boss could only heap praise upon Sordo for digging his team out of a hole.

“He’s like the Navy SEAL: he comes to rescue us when we need and he’s always there,” Adamo declared.

The victorious Evans, meanwhile, celebrated closing to within two points of drivers’ championship leader Ogier in third.

“It feels good!” he said. “We perhaps weren’t the fastest crew this weekend, but we had really good pace and kept out of trouble and obviously did enough to keep Dani at bay today. It comes at a good time, so I’m happy to take this one.”

Podium: Elfyn Evans, Scott Martin, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

The WRC2 field was depleted by positive COVID tests for two Norwegian stars: championship leader Andreas Mikkelsen and Hyundai driver Ole Christian Veiby. This left a battle between the Volkswagen Polos of Esapekka Lappi and Russian prodigy Nikolay Gryazin, the M-Sport Fiesta of Teemu Suninen, the Hyundai of the precocious Oliver Solberg, and the Citroen C3 of Mads Ostberg.

Initially, Ostberg and Lappi pulled clear of the field, but a puncture cost reigning class champion Ostberg dearly, and the Norwegian spent most of his weekend trying to get back on terms.

Solberg was entertainingly wild on his way up to third place. He even replicated his 2003 world champion father Petter’s signature move by standing on a moving car and waving to the crowds after Friday’s superspecial. Ultimately he overcooked it on Saturday’s long stage, losing a minute while dangling two wheels over a precipice (luckily he was in the car at this point). This handed the charging Ostberg another shot at the podium, which he gratefully claimed behind eventual winner Lappi and Suninen.

In WRC3, the event was led almost throughout by championship leader Joann Rossel’s Citroen, but Kajetan Kajetanowicz’s Skoda just edged past him at the powerstage finish line, with Britain’s Chris Ingram scoring his first WRC2 podium in third.

Oliver Solberg, Aaron Johnston, Hyundai Motorsport N Hyundai i20 R5

Photo by: Jordi Rierola / Hyundai Motorsport