BREEN READY TO GRAB HIS FIRST 2021 OPPORTUNITY
Irishman eager to capitalise on Hyundai chance on Arctic Rally
Craig Breen begins his 2021 World Rally Championship bid in Lapland tomorrow (Friday) wary of the dark but boosted by the security of his part-season programme.
Irishman Breen takes over Hyundai’s third factory entry from Dani Sordo on Arctic Rally Finland as part of their car-sharing arrangement for the year.
Although the South Korean make hasn’t made Breen and co-driver Paul Nagle’s schedule public, it’s expected that Rally Estonia and Rally Finland in July and Belgium’s Ypres Rally in mid-August will be among their six WRC outings.
“It’s the first time for a long time I have a more defined programme in the WRC,” said Breen, whose last multi-event campaign was with Citroen in 2018. “I want to start the season in the best way possible. If we can pick up where we left off in Estonia that would be great.”
While Breen has tested ahead of the Rovaniemi-based event, his last competitive outing in a top-ofthe-range Hyundai was on Rally Oudenaarde in Belgium in October, which was intended as an Ypres Rally warm-up only for Ypres to be cancelled shortly afterwards due to a spike of Covid-19 cases in the country.
Breen won that event having scored a hugely impressive second place on Rally Estonia the previous month when the 2020 WRC season resumed following the pandemic’s first wave.
“It’s important to get good points for the manufacturers’ championship and get myself back into the rhythm of driving the World Rally Car,” said Breen, 31. “I don’t have any experience of the [Arctic] stages and luckily not so many people have experience there in the World Rally Car, so it will be a fairly level playing field.”
Breen last gained winter driving mileage when he was part of the Hyundai line-up on Rally Sweden in February 2020, finishing seventh on an event that was shortened by limited snow and ice. He then scored a class win in third place on the Finnish championship-counting Itaralli two weeks later, albeit in a R5-specification i20.