Hyundai's weaknesses with its i20 N Rally1 have been thrust into the spotlight in Kenya following three prop shaft failures on Esapekka Lappi’s car.
The issue prevented the Finn from completing any runs in shakedown after suffering two failures on Wednesday before a third struck on Saturday, which took him out of a comfortable third place.
These issues have occurred in addition to a front suspension failure for Thierry Neuville that forced the Belgian to retire on Friday.
Hyundai deployed containment measures to address the prop shaft problem, utilising assistance from the team’s Alzenau base, but it wasn’t sufficient to avoid a third failure on Lappi’s car.
As per the sporting regulations teams can only make significant changes in designated homologation joker windows. The next window is 1 July, but according to former Williams F1 and Volkswagen WRC technical director Demaison, the team won’t be ready with a full fix to present for that window.
An emergency joker can be taken but Demaison believes that the next window on 1 October is the most realistic option for the squad to use a homologation joker to address its reliability.
“We had an issue today and it is difficult to develop car with the number of jokers you can use,” Demaison told Autosport.
“You can’t change much and you can only change parts at specific times in the calendar.
“WRC is a really difficult series because you homologate the car and you have that for a long time. If you have made a mistake, it is really difficult to change things.
Source: Autosport