Esapekka Lappi says he isn’t afraid by his uncertain World Rally Championship future as Hyundai continues to evaluate its driver options for its third car next year.
The two-time WRC rally winner confirmed that his future is yet to be determined with last weekend’s Rally Chile set to be his final event of the year with the Korean marque.
Last season, Lappi contested a full-time season with Hyundai before moving to a part-time programme, sharing the third car with Andreas Mikkelsen and Dani Sordo this season.
Hyundai has confirmed that Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak will continue in a full-time capacity next year, but its plans for its third car are yet to be announced. Team principal Cyril Abiteboul has previously stated that team is exploring scenarios for its third car.
Lappi has endured a season of highs and lows, claiming a second career win in Sweden, but has since scored 14 points from his appearances in Kenya, Latvia (DNF), Finland and Chile (DNF).
The 33-year-old admitted before the start of Rally Chile that he has had discussions with the team regarding his future and would be keen for another part-time season.
“If I could choose, I would do a similar programme to this year and maybe do a couple of events more,” said Lappi.
“This three-month break after Kenya was too much. If we could do a similar programme with better planning and better testing and without long breaks then yeah I think that could be really nice.
Esapekka Lappi, Hyundai World Rally Team
Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport
“We have talked about it but nothing is decided and even if they [the team] still keep doing the shared third car it doesn’t mean that automatically I will be there but still I’m not afraid. I know if this stops then my life will be fine.”
Lappi struggled to extract speed from his i20 N in Chile before ultimately retiring from the event while occupying eighth position after damaging the front of his car in the penultimate stage.
“It was tough and I didn’t plan for it to go like this. I wanted to be a bit faster this weekend. I didn’t expect to be in the top five but somewhere in between,” he added.
“On Sunday the task was to attack to be in between the Toyotas and mix up the points but I didn’t have the speed. I really attacked the penultimate stage where I lost the bumper but in the end we were also quite useless, so not much positives from the weekend.”
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