Michael Taylor•29 Jan 2014
NEWS
Atkinson restarts WRC career in Mexico
Aussie rally pilot back in the driver's seat with Hyundai for third round of 2014 seasonChris Atkinson will return to the World Rally Championship in a full factory team at Rally Mexico in March.
The Australian will drive the second Hyundai Shell World Rally Team i20 on the all-new car’s first gravel rally, an event which saw his best result in his first WRC career, finishing second in 2008.
The rally, from March 6 to 9, will mark the end of Atkinson’s long journey back from the WRC wilderness, imposed upon him when Subaru pulled out of the championship at the end of 2008.
The 34-year-old Atkinson will sit alongside his usual navigator, Belgian Stephane Prevot, driving the #8 i20. Hyundai Shell WRT team leader, Belgian Thierry Neuville, is driving the #7 car.
Atkinson’s involvement with Hyundai began in July, when he joined the German-based team’s test program and blossomed in two further tests later last year.
“It has been a great pleasure to have been involved in the testing of the Hyundai i20 WRC, but to have the opportunity to contest Rally Mexico with the team is fantastic,” Atkinson said.
“I have had several good results in Mexico, including my best WRC finish of second place in 2008, so I have some great memories of this event and the Mexican fans.
“It will be the competitive debut of the i20 on gravel, so it will be interesting to see how we can perform. I know how hard everyone has been working to prepare for this season, so I hope we can repay them with a good result.”
While Neuville is locked in as the team’s lead driver for 2014, the team has taken a hot-bunk approach to its second car. The #8 car hosted Spanish tarmac specialist, Dani Sordo, for the Rallye Monte-Carlo in January and will run Finnish winter warrior Juha Hanninen in February’s Swedish rally.
All three drivers were involved in Hyundai’s 2013 test program, but Hyundai has so far refused to confirm any of them in more than one-off roles, except to admit that Atkinson will compete for them in Rally Australia.
“We are very happy to have Chris on board for Rally Mexico, an event he has contested several times during his career and one that he knows very well,” Hyundai Shell WRT team principal, Michael Nandan, said.
“After Rallye Monte-Carlo, we had to start making decisions on Rally Mexico and we thought Chris would be the ideal choice for our first rally on a loose surface.
“We were impressed with Chris’s pace in Mexico last year and having feedback from a different driver will definitely help us significantly to further develop the Hyundai i20 WRC. Chris was a major asset during our testing year in the development of the i20 WRC and he certainly deserves to be part of the team this year as well.”
While Atkinson lost his full-time factory ride in the WRC when the Subaru operation folded at the end his most successful season in 2008, he has driven in 10 WRC events since then, setting top-three stage times in both a private Monster Ford Focus and a Citroen DS3 in the last two years.
While it is keen for Atkinson to deliver speed and development feedback on debut, Hyundai will be hoping for a better result and a calmer head from Neuville, who crashed the i20 into retirement on the very first day of the Rallye Monte-Carlo in January.
“It was definitely not the kind of driving we’d asked him to deliver,” a team source insisted.
The second factory i20 ran strongly at the hands of Spanish tarmac specialist, Dani Sordo, until an electrical gremlin refused to restart the car after a regulation tyre swap.
The team has targeted podium finishes in its first season, which seemed realistic when Sordo ran as high as second in Monte Carlo, before it debuts its second all-new rally car in as many years in 2015.
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Written byMichael Taylor
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