Julien Moncet says that Toyota is still ahead of Hyundai despite the fact that his team closed the gap throughout this year and that 2023 will be a better season for them than 2022 while he is optimistic that they can fight for both championships next season.
Hyundai Motorsport has never won a drivers' championship in the team's history while there has been two years since the time that it clinched the manufacturers' title. In 2022, the Alzenau-based team did not have a positive start as the i20N faced many reliability issues which were related to the hybrid unit, the differential, the suspension etc. However, they managed to turnaround this difficult situation on the second half of the season as its drivers won four rallies and finished five times on the podium positions. In fact, Ott Tanak broke the curse of Hyundai in Finland after winning this event while it was the first time that the team won three rallies in a row.
"For sure we had the potential to do even better this year", Moncet said.
"We won many races, we did a lot of podiums and so on but if we could have started our season earlier, or let’s say at the same time as the others, let’s say we could have been in the fight for the championship until the end and why not winning?
"But this isn’t really a certain one.
"Definitely we need to look forward in 2023 and I do not say that we will win but we are in a much better position than 2022.
"And definitely the target will be to win, as always, but I would say even more next year to secure both championships.
"But I am quite sure Toyota will not make it easy for us, and M-Sport as well.
"Whether it was too easy in the first part of 2022 or whether we put some pressure on them I don’t know, but they started to do a few mistakes and this helped us definitely.
"I think still Toyota has a great car, is a great team and they have still a bit the edge on us, but we are not far behind.
"We are closing the gap and with our new driver lineup there is no reason we cannot catch up next year".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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