Evans holds WRC Rally Chile lead after failed Hyundai protest

Hyundai lodged a protest against the stewards' decision to reallocate a stage one time to Elfyn Evans

Toyota’s Elfyn Evans has held onto the Rally Chile lead after stewards rejected a protest from the Hyundai World Rally Championship team against the reallocation of a notional stage time.

Hyundai’s Ott Tanak ended Friday’s six stages with a 0.4-second margin over Evans before stewards received a request to review the notional time issued to Evans following the cancellation of stage one.

Only Thierry Neuville, Tanak and Sebastien Ogier successfully navigated through stage one (Pulperia, 19.72km) before officials were forced to cancel the test on spectator safety grounds.

Notional times based on Neuville’s effort (the slowest time), were awarded to the rest of the Rally1 field, who were forced to complete the stage in road mode. This was, however, subject to revision after the second pass of the test later in the day (stage four).

Following these runs, the clerk of the course received a request to review the allocated time awarded to Evans.

After reviewing the times posted in the second pass of the stage, Evans, M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux and Toyota’s Sami Pajari have been issued new notional times for stage one.

As a result, Evans' new time was two seconds faster than Tanak instead of being 1.4s slower, handing the Toyota driver a revised three-second rally lead.

Hyundai subsequently lodged a protest against the clerk of the course’s decision on Friday night. Following a hearing attended by representatives from Hyundai and Toyota, stewards elected to reject the protest, ensuring Evans' reallocated notional time stands heading into Saturday’s six stages.

“The protester’s representative explained that the stages [SS1 and SS4] were conducted differently and this may have accounted for differences in the respective stage times,” read the stewards report.

“Mr. [Tolga] Ozakinci [Hyundai team manager] stated that, in their opinion, the ideal principle for allocating notional times should be based on the fastest stage time achieved by the crew to complete SS1 [crew of car no. 17 Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais] rather than the slowest time achieved by the crew to complete SS1 [i.e. crew of car bo. 11 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe].

“Mr. Ozakinci agreed with the chairperson that the authority judging fairness lies with the clerk of course’s determination, as stated within Article 52 of the 2024 FIA WRC sporting regulations.

“However, the competitor believed that the principle proposed by them was also fair and should be considered. Consequently, it was their opinion that the stewards should adopt their suggested principle as against that adopted by the clerk of the course.

“The FIA sporting delegate stated that the principle usually adopted within the WRC to allocate notional times has been to consider the time achieved for the stage by the slowest car in the class instead of the fastest car.“He also explained that there are other methods that could be used to calculate and establish a fair allocation of notional times based on different criteria.

“After SS4, the clerk of the course determined that only car no. 33 had improved its time on SS4 and as such decided not to consider the stage time of SS4 for allocation purposes. However, after receiving a request from the concerned party to reconsider the notional time allocated in COC Notification No. 1, the clerk of the course reviewed the stage times achieved on SS4 and issued COC Notification No. 2 to reallocate stage times for cars 33, 16, and 5 accordingly.

“The FIA sporting delegate stated that they viewed the allocation of notional times for SS1 to be in line with the established procedure.“He acknowledged that the procedure of allocating notional times is not an exact science and opens the door to alternative interpretations, with a possibility that each different party views fairness differently.

“In rebuttal, the protester considered that car no. 33 should be allocated a slower notional time than that allocated in COC Notification No. 2. They suggested that the setting of notional times should be conducted in a subjective way and not objectively.”

In response to Hyundai’s argument, the stewards admitted that the protestor’s “proposed method for calculating the notional times for the cars affected on SS1 as set out in their protest could be adopted, but consider that this is only one method for calculating the notional times”.

In summary, the stewards concluded that “the method adopted by the Clerk of the Course to allocate for SS1 notional times as specified in CoC Notification No. 2 was fair and reasonable.

“The protester has therefore failed to establish that the notional times allocated by the clerk of the course to the affected cars by CoC Notification No. 2 was unfair in an objective way.

“Accordingly, the notional times allocated to the cars remain as set out in CoC Notification No. 2.”