Hyundai Motorsport

Hyundai Motorsport began when Hyundai competed in the F2 class of the World Rally Championship in 1998 and 1999. It was run by British company Motor Sports Development (MSD), with David Whitehead as team principal. In September 1999, Hyundai unveiled the Accent WRC, a World Rally Car based on the Hyundai Accent. The Hyundai World Rally Team debuted the car at the 2000 Swedish Rally and achieved their first top-ten result at that year's Rally Argentina, when Alister McRae and Kenneth Eriksson finished seventh and eighth, respectively. Eriksson later drove the car to fifth place in New Zealand and fourth in Australia. In 2001, Hyundai debuted a new evolution of the Accent WRC, which was intended to improve reliability, but the performance of the car was still not good enough to challenge the four big teams (Ford World Rally Team, Mitsubishi, Peugeot and Subaru). However, at the season-ending Rally GB, the team achieved their best result with McRae finishing fourth and Eriksson sixth.

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• Rally mexico day three hyundai motorsport 2017
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For the 2002 season, Hyundai hired the four-time world champion Juha Kankkunen, along with Freddy Loix and Armin Schwarz. Kankkunen's fifth place in New Zealand was the team's best result, but they managed to edge out Škoda and Mitsubishi by one point in the battle for fourth place in the manufacturers' world championship. In September 2003, after a season hampered by budget constraints, Hyundai announced their withdrawal from the WRC ending the partnership with MSD, and planned to return in 2006 which didn't happen.

Hyundai announced at the 2012 Paris Motor Show that they would be returning to the WRC for 2014, using the i20 model built to World Rally Car specifications. Hyundai also announced that their official test drivers for 2013 would be Juho Hänninen, Bryan Bouffier and Chris Atkinson.

On the 19th of December, 2012 Hyundai Motorsport GmbH was established in Alzenau, Germany, as responsible for Hyundai’s global motorsport activities and primarily for its World Rally Championship programme.

Thierry Neuville was confirmed as lead driver of Hyundai Motorsport's World Rally Championship programme from 2014. Neuville, along with his co-driver Nicolas Gilsoul, will pilot Hyundai’s new i20 WRC in all 13 WRC events in 2014, beginning with the team’s debut at the Monte-Carlo Rally in January. Thierry Neuville was the first driver that scored a top-three finish for Hyundai in the WRC. He ended third in Rally Guanajuato México 2014. He and Hyundai also won their very 1st rally at that years' ADAC Rallye Deutschland.