The stewards of Rally New Zealand gave to Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville time penalties for breaking the sporting regulations in Stage 1 of the rally.
More specifically, the energy released during a hybrid boost on both cars was higher than the maximum value allowed for that stage (243.83 kJ versus 240 kJ) and in fact Tanak's car released more energy two times during that stage, therefore each Hyundai driver received a 5-time penalty.
This time penalty has an impact to Tanak's lead, as he was ahead of Elfyn Evans for only 0,2 seconds, and now he drops to second place, 4.8 seconds behind the Toyota driver.
On the other hand, Neuville remains sixth overall and did not lose any position as his gap from the eighth Oliver Solberg was at 42,7 seconds at the end of Friday.
Finally, the team manager of Hyundai Motorsport, Pablo Marcos, Marcos accepted the values measured and admitted that one of their engineers had made a mistake as he was not aware that the original maximum value of the hybrid boost for SSS1 had been changed in Bulletin No. 2, which was published on 21st September 2022. He apologized for this mistake which was due to human error.
Read below the stewards' decisions:
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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