Hyundai boss says team must stop shipping its points
Hyundai Motorsport director Andrea Adamo says his team has to stop making Toyota’s job easier in the WRC.
The squad’s 44-point lead over Toyota has been cut to just eight over the last two rallies and Adamo says he wants to see that trend reversed from this week’s Rally Turkey onwards. Adamo said: “We have to be in control of our own destiny and that means being high performing and reliable in every single area of our operation.
“We can’t wait for others to have problems to get results. This is not how we should come rallying or racing. So our car performance in Germany has been good but our team performance has not. We have to do better.
“One of the worst things I heard said is: ‘Ah, we stopped because of a two Euro component failing.’ If that happens then you are twice stupid – firstly for letting it happen in the first place and then because you don’t spend five Euros and it won’t happen. We all know what we expect from Hyundai and there is pressure on my shoulders, but that is coming on top of the pressure I put on myself.”
Asked how Hyundai could stop shipping points to Toyota in Turkey, Adamo replied: “It’s not just Turkey, it’s all the events where we have to show we have learned from our mistakes. It’s about procedures, controls, the organisation. My team has done some amazing things so far, but the level of performance has to be improved. We have had issues and these have let Toyota back in. If we take points instead of these small issues then things would look very different.” ●Hyundai has confirmed it will field an i20 Coupe WRC at next month’s Rallylegend (Thierry Neuville) and Rally Ciudad de Granada (Sebastien Loeb) as preparation for the penultimate round of the season, Rally of Spain.