Nagle to return to WRC action at Rally Finland
PAUL Nagle and Craig Breen will get their second World Rally Championship outing of the season on Rally Finland but the actual date of the event remains up in the air.
The Irish crew were contracted to compete on selected WRC rallies for the Hyundai Motorsport World Rally Team but the Covid-19 pandemic cast their plans in disarray. The last WRC event to run before the global shut-down was Rally Mexico in March. Promoters of the series are scrambling to save the series, seven rounds are needed to make it viable and Finland looks certain to be the rally the will re-launch the series.
It is scheduled to run from August 6 to 9 but sources within the WRC also say that the event may be deferred to the weekend of September 6, the original date for Rally New Zealand.
Such a move would give Finnish organisers a better chance to prepare for an ever-changing world and would find favour with the European-based teams as it would reduce travel and transport costs in an already curtailed series.
Whatever happens, date wise, Breen and Nagle are certain to start the Finnish round, marking their second outing this year with the Germany-based Korean team.
They will join team regulars Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak in a three-car attack on one of the most demanding rallies in the WRC.
Nagle is a past winner of the event, sitting alongside Kris Meeke in 2016, and the Killarney man remains one of two co-drivers from Ireland or Britain to win the rally in its 70-year history. This will mark Breen’s 11th start on the highly-specialised event, his best result coming in 2016 when, as Meeke and Nagle’s team mate, he took third overall.
Finland last year was their first official outing for Hyundai at world level and their seventh overall set them up for further runs including Britain and Australia.
Their last rally for the Hyundai WRC team was on Rally Sweden in February where they finished seventh overall in a rally that was shortened due to a lack of snow in the Karlstad region.
The pair were always promised a limited 2020 programme with Hyundai but with the way the world changed since their last outing in February nothing was certain.
“I can’t wait for Rally Finland alongside Craig with Hyundai, I have some great memories of some great roads there,” said Nagle. “I hope we get a test before the event but nothing is certain.”
Last year they tackled Rally Estonia as a warm-up event and while the event is set for July 24 to 26, inter-country quarantine rules could prevent any Rally Finland hopeful of contesting this event.
The Finland announcement will give the Irish team hope that they will be offered more outings before the end of the year and that they will be drafted into the team full time (or at the very least with an extended programme) for 2021.
Other rounds expected to run this year without disruption include Turkey (September), Germany (October) and Britain (November). If all these go ahead and are added to Monte Carlo, Sweden and Mexico, which have already run, championship organisers will get their required seven rounds. Additionally, Japan and New Zealand could still run and Italy’s June event could get deferred.
If all of that comes together the championship will only have lost Argentina, Portugal and Kenya to the pandemic and Chile, which was cancelled due to political unrest in the South American country.