Starting from the 2025 WRC season, Hankook will be the sole supplier of tires to the World Championship, replacing Pirelli after 4 years.
The Korean tire manufacturer will use the current season to test its tires on several occasions. The goal is clear: get to the start of the next one by delivering the best possible products to the teams.
Tests on the 2025 tires began last month with tests carried out in Sweden on the snow tyres, which will only be used in the second 2025 WRC event which will also be held in February.
In a few days, asphalt tires will make their debut, with the teams engaged in the pre-event tests of the Croatian Rally, the fourth round of the 2024 season and second of the season on asphalt after the Rallye Monte-Carlo (which is considered a rally by mixed conditions).
The three teams competing for victories and titles, therefore Toyota Gazoo Racing, Hyundai Motorsport and M-Sport Ford, will have the opportunity to carry out tests with the new Hankooks, fielding respectively two regular drivers who work all season and one part-time.
Toyota will test the Korean tires with the vice leader of the Drivers' World Championship Elfyn Evans, Hyundai with Andreas Mikkelsen and M-Sport with Adrien Fourmaux, fresh from two consecutive podiums and third place in the Drivers' World Championship.
The teams will only be able to test the tyres, clocking up kilometres, but will not be able to work on the set-up of the cars, nor on other aspects linked to the Croatian Rally. These will therefore be tests dedicated exclusively to tire development in which the teams will not be able to gain any type of technical advantage in view of the event which will be held from 19 to 21 April.
The Hankook test will take place even in the absence of hybrid propulsion. In fact, we would like to remind you that from 2025 the electric package placed just before the rear axle of the current Rally1 models made by Compact Dynamics will be banned following the latest decisions ratified by the World Motorsport Council.
It is likely that the teams will keep the electric components on the cars to maintain the weight which from 2025 will no longer be given by the hybrid, but by ballast. After the Croatia Rally, the WRC will begin the part of the season – the most substantial one – on dirt with the Portugal Rally from 9 to 12 May, followed by the Sardinia Italy Rally, the Poland Rally, then Latvia, Finland Acropolis (Greece) and Chile .
At that point Hankook will also have the opportunity to test the dirt tyres, before closing the season on asphalt again with the Central European Rally and the Japan Rally.
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