When Andrea Adamo walked into Hyundai Motorsport for the primary time, he couldn’t have been extra relaxed. Sure, he was at its HQ in Alzenau, Germany, for a job interview, but it surely was going be the best interview of his life.
Whether or not he left there as Hyundai Buyer Racing supervisor or not, it wouldn’t change his life.
“I had been working in motorsport for 25 years,” says Adamo. “However I had stopped. I used to be prepared for a traditional life, to work from eight within the morning till 5 within the night after which go house. And keep house on the weekend.
“I had a name to ask if I’d come for the interview. Why not? I went and had a pleasant chat with [then Hyundai Motorsport team principal] Michel Nandan after which I took the aircraft again to Turin. I didn’t assume extra about it. That was on the Wednesday. I bought one other phone name, this time asking if I might begin on Monday.”
That was in 2015. Adamo began on the Monday.
His job was to supervise the event of buyer operations operating alongside Nandan’s manufacturing unit World Rally Championship outfit. Having invested thousands and thousands of euros in an i20 WRC automotive, the Koreans wished to see some monetary return within the form of gross sales of a second-tier R5 automotive, with an i30 TCR race automotive following a few years later.
Compared to Hyundai’s first stint as a manufacturing unit crew within the WRC – a dismal, podium-less, four-year effort primarily based on the Accent WRC and concluding with a mid-season WRC walkout in 2003 – the second shot delivered virtually prompt success. In season one, 2014, the i20 was within the high three by spherical three and successful six rallies later.
This time, Hyundai Motor Company had determined to do the job itself; no outsourcing to a European preparation agency. As an alternative, an unlimited premises on the outskirts of Frankfurt was retained and Hyundai Motorsport born.
The German metropolis’s direct freight flights to and from Seoul made for a wholly workable affiliation and growth cycle between Europe and Asia. The one difficulty for Nandan was that Seoul noticed no motive why the automotive couldn’t be prepared in subsequent to no time. Subsequent to no time, like yesterday.
As well-known as Thierry Neuville’s Rally Germany victory was in 2014 – coming after he rolled by way of a winery at shakedown – it flattered to deceive and got here after the most effective of the remaining had fallen by the wayside.
Designed and in-built a matter of months, the i20 was no match for the automotive developed simply down the street in Hanover. Volkswagen’s well-resourced and exactly timed return to rallying crushed the whole lot in its path for 4 years.
VW’s 2016 Dieselgate-driven departure from the WRC opened a window of alternative for its rivals. Hyundai was broadly anticipated to be the crew to learn probably the most.
Pre-season testing in late 2016 recognized Nandan’s i20 Coupé WRC because the prime mover on the eve of the debut of the game’s fastest-ever era. Neuville’s rally-leading velocity by way of Monte Carlo and Sweden demonstrated tempo in addition to promise. However errors from the Belgian failed to show that promise into prizes.
