Development updates at Hyundai Motorsport

The introduction of the new regulations for the 2017 World Rally Cars has substantially widened the focus of the WRC engineers.  

In a technical sense with all the four new cars up and running, maybe not all reliably, there is now going to be an extra lot of work to be done to get the best out of them.  

Michel Nandan (left) with Thierry Neuville. (Photo: Martin Holmes)We asked Hyundai Motorsport principal, Michel Nandan, about development of central differentials, absent from World Rally Cars since the start of the 2011 season, and presumably now installed on the 2017 WRC cars in a relatively primitive form, and what is the biggest challenge waiting now to be achieved?

MN: Yes, of course it must be to optimise the centre differential, let us say the mapping of the centre differential, not only in order to try to get the best possible behaviour of the car good, but also in order to get good tyre wear, front and rear.   

And then of course because of the extra power we still have to work on the suspension, because traction is the most important thing.

MH:  Regarding the central differential, what has to change - the development of the system or the way that the drivers drive?

MN: It is a little bit of both things.  To start with, it was a problem for drivers to adapt to the new development.  Most of the drivers could not immediately adapt their driving  because central differentials were last used  some years ago.  They really need to adapt their driving to optimise the behaviour of the car, to make the car really more easy to drive in the corners.  

So adapting is something which needs time because you need quite a lot of testing in different conditions, on different road conditions.  But I think so far the system is giving quite good results for us, and of course this is something we are always improving in every test.

MH: Elsewhere at HMSG, R5 work has been very busy!

MN: We were originally very busy setting up the build of the cars, but now we are in a phase where we have to improve the car.  Not only to make improvements, but to find basic set-up for the customer in all the different conditions they can have.  

So it requires some more testing in specific roads.  These cars can be used in really different types of roads, and we really need to suit the best for our customer.  

Most of the work at the moment is to propose different types of set-up for the different type of stages they can have, and then we are working on some development items to improve the car generally.   We will need to homologate some jokers, probably in the middle or the end of the year.  

And as you know, R5 cars will have the possibility to have the paddle shift gearshift system next year.  So this is something we are also working on and it will require a bit of testing.

- Martin Holmes

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