Hyundai Reveals Engine Upgrade Ahead of Portugal

Andrew Wheatley has revealed that Hyundai Motorsport introduced a new engine development package ahead of Rally Portugal 2026. The Hyundai team principal explained that modifications to the air intake system are expected to improve engine power and strengthen the team’s competitiveness during the gravel phase of the season.

Hyundai arrives in Portugal encouraged by the competitive pace shown by Thierry Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux during shakedown running. Fourmaux initially topped the timesheets before Neuville eventually completed the session fastest overall.

According to Wheatley, the positive performance is an indication that Hyundai may finally be finding a more effective development direction after struggling against the dominance of Toyota Gazoo Racing during the opening part of the season.

Baca JugaHyundai Ungkap Upgrade Mesin Jelang Portugal

“The most important thing right now is that we are competitive,” Wheatley explained.

From a technical standpoint, Hyundai modified the engine’s air intake system to improve airflow efficiency into the combustion unit. Wheatley stated that the changes were designed to allow the engine to “breathe” more freely, helping recover some of the power previously lost following fuel specification changes.

Although Hyundai does not consider the upgrade revolutionary, the team views it as an important step in its continuous development process throughout the season. The main objective remains improving outright power output and performance response on high-speed gravel stages.

“The air intake system has been slightly modified to give us more power,” Wheatley confirmed.

Wheatley also revealed Hyundai has now used all available homologation development wildcards for its current Rally1 platform. As a result, major homologated upgrades are effectively exhausted for the remainder of the season.

However, Hyundai still retains flexibility to refine smaller non-homologated areas later in the campaign. The team’s primary focus is now maximising the existing package during the European gravel rallies, which are considered better suited to the Hyundai compared to the early asphalt events.

Portugal is viewed internally as one of Hyundai’s most important rallies of the season because it could determine whether the manufacturer is genuinely capable of returning to regular victory contention against Toyota. From a pure performance perspective, Hyundai believes gravel conditions naturally hide some of the weaknesses that were more exposed on asphalt.

“We think our competitive level will become clearer from Portugal until the end of the season,” Wheatley added.

Following Portugal, the WRC calendar will briefly return to asphalt before another sequence of gravel rallies later in the summer. Hyundai believes events such as Japan will suit the car significantly better than Croatia or the Canary Islands, which represented some of the team’s weakest performances earlier this year.

With Hyundai beginning to show signs of progress while introducing fresh technical upgrades, Rally Portugal is now emerging as one of the defining moments in determining whether the Korean manufacturer can genuinely revive the WRC title fight against Toyota’s dominance.