Rally Islas Canarias sounds lovely until you remember rally cars are involved, and someone has decided 18 stages around Gran Canaria is a sensible way to spend a weekend.
Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team arrives at round five of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship with two fresh podiums behind it, one in Kenya and another in Croatia. That sounds cheerful enough, but Croatia also left the team with the sort of near-miss frustration that tends to make engineers stare at laptops as if the answer is hiding between two tyre-temperature graphs.
Now comes Gran Canaria, which is not a gravel brawl, a snow lottery, or a mud bath. It is tarmac, but not the lazy sort. The island’s roads are clean, fast, and high-grip, with long corners that ask the pacenotes to be exact. Get the line wrong and there is no heroic recovery, just a rapid lesson in physics and local geology.
This year also gives the event its 50th anniversary, so everyone gets cake, history, and 301.30km of competitive distance. The route runs across 18 stages, including a Super Special Stage at the Las Palmas football stadium. That should look spectacular, although rallying inside a stadium always has the faint whiff of making a panther perform in a shopping centre. Still, the crowd will love it.
Above: 2026 Polestar 2 DM Performance The Forgotten Polestar is Fabulous
#Polestar2 #EV #BowersWilkins #ElectricCars #SwedishDesign
Help Support Gay Car Boys Subscribe to our Youtube Channel by SMASHING THE BUTTON ABOVE
ABOVE: Hyundai i20 N Rally1 cars on Gran Canaria tarmac ahead of Rally Islas Canarias.
Hyundai’s main problem is the weather. The coast can be all postcards and sunscreen, while the mountain stages sit under rain and fog like a damp Victorian aunt. Adrien Fourmaux said the roads should be clean and high-grip, but the mountain fog can make it feel like a different rally from the one you started at sea level. That is not romantic, that is a pacenote migraine.
Thierry Neuville is looking for precision rather than heroics. He called the rally the cleanest and highest-grip tarmac event of the season, but also pointed to the long, technical corners that make trusted pacenotes the difference between looking tidy and arriving somewhere sideways with a sheepish radio call. Hyundai says it has worked on balance and precision in the i20 N Rally1, which is exactly what you want when the road behaves like a circuit until the weather gets bored.
The local heat comes from Dani Sordo. He returns to Hyundai for his home rally and his first Rally1 outing since Acropolis Rally in 2024. Sordo says he wants victory or a podium, which is exactly the sort of thing a driver should say before a home tarmac rally. Anything less would sound like ordering still water at Mardi Gras.
Sordo has recent seat time from Rallye La Llana, where he worked on setup and balance with Cándido Carrera. Ignore the warm quote and the practical warning is still sitting there: a Spanish driver, in a Hyundai he knows, on Spanish tarmac, with the crowd behind him, is not there for a ceremonial wave and a nice lunch.
Hyundai’s Sporting Director Andrew Wheatley sounded pleased with the speed in Croatia but not with the result, which is fair enough. Motorsport people do not travel the world to collect moral victories and airline points. He says the job in Canarias is to make zero mistakes, optimise everything, and be ready if rivals trip over the island’s weather or their own ambition.
The i20 N Rally1 has shown pace on every rally this year, and Hyundai says reliability in Croatia was perfect. Good. Now it has to turn that into something less polite than another nearly-there weekend. Rally Islas Canarias is clean enough to reward precision and strange enough to punish smugness, which makes it a rather good place to find out whether Hyundai has sharpened the blade.
The rally runs from April 23 to 26. If the fog stays away, expect speed. If it rolls in over the hills, Gran Canaria stops being a postcard and starts behaving like a motorsport trap with palm trees.
More Hyundai Stories
- EVX Solving the Urban EV Gap in The Garage Divide.
- Why Android Automotive OS is a Digital Nightmare – UPDATED
- 2027 Hyundai IONIQ 3 EV with Space and Range
Help Support Gay Car Boys Subscribe to our Youtube Channel
Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
Leave a Reply