‘Three left minus, long, bumpy’, may resemble an ordinary rally pacenote. But this is how a World Rally Championship driver sees one of motorsport’s most famous corners – the Karussell at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Yes, you have read that correctly. You could be forgiven to question ‘what kind of fever dream am I about to read?’ That’s a totally valid response, but this was by no means a dream. To test its WRC title-leading crew Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe, Hyundai Motorsport set a unique rally-meets-race circuit challenge.
The pair were tasked to drive the 73-turn Nurburgring Nordschleife but to pacenotes, as if it were a rally stage, behind the wheel of a TCR-spec race-prepared touring car. Motorsport.com was invited to follow the crews and witness the art of pacenote making first-hand for an insight into how a rally crew operates outside their comfort zone.
The undulating and relentless 20.8-kilometre ribbon of asphalt nestled in Germany’s Eifel mountains is perhaps the only renowned permanent circuit that can mimic a rally stage, barring Australia’s Mount Panorama or even Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps.
The latter has even featured as part of a WRC event – the 2021 Ypres Rally – which marked the first of seven rally wins to date since Neuville and Wydaeghe joined forces. But Spa and Monza – the latter appearing on the calendar during the WRC’s 2020 and 2021 COVID-19-affected seasons – are the only world-famous circuits to have graced the WRC calendar in recent years. Taking on the Nurburgring as a rally stage is therefore an unusual task.
“[The Nordschleife] is one of the most challenging circuits, a bit like Rally Finland but on Tarmac,” Neuville tells Motorsport.com. “That is what I can compare it to. There are similarities in the pacenotes too!”
Two days after finishing third on Croatia’s WRC asphalt stages, Neuville and Wydaeghe swapped the narrow roads for the expanses of the Nurburgring and traded their Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car for a Hyundai i30 N TCR. For Neuville, the Nordscheife is a venue that holds childhood trackside memories watching the Nurburgring 24 Hours. But tackling the Green Hell as if it’s a WRC rally stage was an altogether new experience.
Hyundai’s rally crew treated their Nurburgring pacenotes as they would for any rally stage
Photo by: Hyundai Motorsport
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