Despite PH first covering Hyundai's at the Nurburgring
back in 2013
WRC campaign
, the brand arguably still struggles for true performance kudos. Here is Hyundai's latest step towards a fast road car, the development i30 for this weekend's Nurburgring 24-hour.
Lots of testing and racing being done...
Hyundai says 40 per cent of this car is new, including a newly-developed 2.0-litre turbo engine that's designed as a "performance focused powerplant." Hurry up with the road car! Also of note in the fresh parts are wheels, wings, transmission and dampers. With VW having made such a fuss about the importance of the Nurburgring in setting up the
Golf Clubsport S
, it will be interesting to see how much from this race car will make it to an i30 N production car.
The i30 2.0-litre will race with two other Hyundai models at the weekend, an i30 1.6 Turbo that's defending a 2015 class win as well as a Veloster. Hyundai claims that the road cars, when they arrive, will be "focused on delivering maximum driving pleasure to true motoring enthusiasts."
It's predicted that the Hyundais will complete more than 4,000km around the Nurburgring this weekend, hopefully providing plenty of data and experience to aid the road car development. Can a fast Hyundai really take it to the hot hatch establishment first time around? Is Nurburgring testing still valid? Could Hyundai win again at the N24? PH will be in Germany at the weekend, more details to follow from the forest!
here