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‘Understeer’ was the word of the week at Hyundai, with the Korean squad failing to find anything like the form it managed to win in Corsica last season. The ultimate insult came for Thierry Neuville when a final-stage problem cost him his chance to challe

Skoda’s resident asphalt expert Jan Kopecky delivered a peerless performance in the mountains to dominate WRC2 and win by almost two minutes.

France’s round of the World Rally Championship marked the arrival of rallying’s latest R5 car, with Citroen junior driver Stephane Lefebvre charged with winning this year’s support series title aboard one of the all-new C3 R5s. PH Sport ran a brace of cars for Lefebvre and Yoann Bonato but both were knobbled by significant brake problems through the first day ( see rally news). Those brake issues were a contributing factor in Lefebvre’s crash.

Bonato drew praise from Citroen team principal Pierre Budar for keeping Kopecky honest for as long as possible, but once the Fabiadriving Czech Republic star got into his stride you had the feeling this result was only going one way.

Kopecky kept his nose clean and the factory Skoda in the middle of the road en route to a solid maximum score, further bolstering his hopes of lifting (or being given the opportunity by Skoda to lift) this year’s WRC2 title.

As the event progressed, Bonato spent more and more time looking in his mirror, fighting off a spirited charge from Kopecky’s team-mate Ole Christian Veiby. Unfortunately for the Norwegian, his arrival in second place coincided with a previously unseen transmission fault after a weld broke on an input shaft on the gearbox, leaving the car jammed in gear. He made the end of day service and charged back through Sunday, just missing out on Fabio Andolfi’s third place by 1.8s.

Had Britain’s Gus Greensmith been counting Corsica as a scoring round in his WRC2 title effort, he would have finished a frustrated fifth. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t. His rally was a source of considerable irritation, much of which was caused by being held up on the stages by slower rivals.

Jean-baptiste Franceschi scored a home JWRC victory, edging countryman Terry Folb in the all-fiesta R2T series. Folb had the advantage at the end of the opening day, but he could do little to contain the charging Franceschi, who overturned a 10s deficit on Friday night into a 17s lead on Saturday night and a 33-second victory on Sunday afternoon.

“It’s been perfect,” Franceschi said. “Everything has worked really well.”

Folb was magnanimous in second, saying: “Jean-baptiste had a very good rally, it was difficult to match him here.”

Irishman Callum Devine scored a solid fifth on only his second appearance in the series, coming in behind more experienced rivals Emil Bergkvist and Denis Radstrom. Devine admitted the experience had been an eye-opener.

“I’ve never done anything like the length of these stages,” he said. “I’ve learned so much again on this event. I felt a bit more at home on the Tarmac than I did on the snow, but these roads really are nothing like what we have in Ireland.”

Brit Tom Williams returned to the JWRC after his Mexican adventure and was running inside the top 10 until a puncture first thing Saturday dropped him back to 11th.

Corsica marked the return of the FIA R-GT Cup, with a class win for Italian Andrea Nucita in his Abarth 124. There was widespread disappointment across Corsica after Irishman John Coyne crashed the bellowing Porsche 911 GT3 out on the opening stage.

Rarely, if ever, looked like scoring back-toback Corsica wins last week. Rightly pointed out (regularly and often) that he was the fastest i20 driver, but this was a weekend to forget for the Belgian.