Dani Sordo, driver of the WRC Hyundai Motorsport team, will retire at the end of the 2022 season. Sooner or later it had to happen, but after a solid couple of years, perhaps the best of his career, it is impressive to think that in just over a year the Spaniard will hang his helmet on the nail.
“The next will be my last season”. Deaf said so. A very simple sentence issued ad AS in an interview on the eve of the Rally de Catalunya, in which Hyundai will take part as a starter driver in the third i20 Coupé WRC to try to keep alive the faint hope of the Korean manufacturer’s World Constructors’ Championship.
It will therefore be the last home rally he will compete at the wheel of a WRC Plus, “the Group B of our generation”, defined the native of Torrelavega. Next year Sordo will be able to race behind the wheel of the hybrid i20 N Rally1, the daughter of the new regulation that will be introduced on January 1st of next year and which will be valid for at least 3 years.
“I’m happy to try to drive hybrid cars, but the current cars are great. I think the new ones can be too, but it will be difficult to beat today’s ones, which were Group B of this generation. They marked an era. They are. the fastest cars, those able to turn corners like never before, but I must admit that I liked more the feeling that cars like the Citroen Xara gave me, which moved more, were more natural from the point of view handling. With the current ones, your brain turns off when cornering. “
So the renewal with Hyundai, the one signed by Sordo a few days ago, is annual: “It was what I wanted, and I think they are happy too”. I like that you are counting on me and they think I can spend another year helping the team. I still keep the passion intact, I keep giving my all, and that’s something I see when I do a test or arrive at a rally like the one in Catalonia. Without passion this doesn’t work. I don’t want to do the whole championship, but I want to do some races and collaborate with the team. “
For Sordo, the Rally of Catalonia 2021 will be the first in which Candido Carrera will sail. The new navigator took over from Borja Rozada a few weeks ago and made his WRC debut with Sordo at the Acropolis in September, finishing in fourth place.
The latter, calendar permitting, will do so next year at the wheel of the i20 N Rally1, shortly before closing his career when he will have already turned 39. Sordo is in fact a class of 1983, born on May 2nd of that year.