Hyundai Showes Off its Colors / Citroen Recruits New Lineup of Drivers

Finally we get to see some eye-catching colours in a WRC car after a long time. Hyundai unveiled the livery of its i20 WRC, and after which most assembled at the venue carrying smiles around, perhaps even back home. Many of us from the online community too were mesmerised with the livery and were praising for the different looks of the machine. 

Partnered with Shell, the team will run under the name of Hyundai Shell World Rally Team.

“Shell is delighted to be returning to the WRC in 2014 with Hyundai,” said Colin Abraham, Shell Vice President Marketing [Fuels and Lubricants]. “Shell and Hyundai have worked closely together to deliver a high quality product to customers around the world for more than eight years. We bring a genuine understanding of each other’s strengths to this exciting new team as the Hyundai i20 WRC prepares for its first competitive season.”

We have seen it being evolved for sometime now, and now its colourful outlook. All we need to wait is for a little more than a month to see it in competition in Rallye Montecarlo.

“We have worked tremendously hard to get where we are today and to be able to launch our new WRC team to the world,” said Team Principal of Hyundai Motorsport GmbH, Michel Nandan. “In less than one year, we have built and tested a brand new WRC-specification car, the Hyundai i20 WRC, and established a professional team and modern motorsport facility. It’s a huge accomplishment but we know that we have a lot to learn in our first season. Our aims for 2014 are realistic: we want to finish each rally with both cars and build up a database of information and experience so we can develop ourselves into prospective rally winners in the future. If all goes well, we will hope to be competing for occasional podiums as the year progresses.”

Thierry Neuville is going to be a permanent driver of choice, as long as he delivers what he has been hired for, otherwise the new regulations states that there is no necessity to hold on to any one driver for more than 10 rounds in a season.

There is quite a long lineup of reserve or non-permanent seat on the no.2 car. Juho Hanninen, Dani Sordo & Chris Atkinson will take their positions in the game of musical chair in the rest of the season, starting from Dani in Montecarlo, later with Juho in Rally Sweden and Atko will drive in Rally Mexico & Rally Australia. The rest of the rounds will be decided individually later.

And lastly, if you are wondering what that 'N' stands for, it is for the first version of the WRC car developed at Namyang, Korea at Hyundai's R&D center. Also the Hyundai's Europe is intent to develop a road going cars in the 'N' series, with technology implementation from the WRC car, is what the Hyundai's official announced. They perhaps, wants to emulate the 'R' series of various manufacturer's, like Volkswagen's Polo R and also maybe like 'M' series from BMW.

On the other hand, Citroen has changed the two main drivers' lineup to Brit's Kris Meeke & Norway's Mads Ostberg in the coming 2014 season. Although the official press-release is on 16th this month, they couldn't hold themselves and shared the drivers' lineup.

Abu Dhabi's driver Khalid Al-Qassimi will continue to drive in a third car for a few selected events and will concentrate for MERC in a Citroen DS3 RRC.

Now the M-Sport is left as a team to announce its line of attack, since Volkswagen has no intent to change their attack formula!