Hybrid Hyundai WRC Rally Car Catches Fire, Burns for an Hour

The WRC's Rally Japan is underway, but three-time WRC winner Dani Sordo's weekend is already over. His WRC-spec Hyundai i20 N caught fire during the day's second special stage, with the fire quickly growing too large for he and co-driver Candido Carrera to contain. The car was left burning for over an hour, but both driver and co-driver were able to escape to safety.

Worryingly, Hyundai WRC head Julien Moncet is unsure what actually caused the fire. In fact, he told Motorsport that he thinks the car has been so burnt that the team may be unable to identify the specific cause. He does, however, say that the fire is unlikely to be related to the massive blaze fellow Hyundai driver Oliver Solberg saw back in April. That fire, he said, was a result of a crash pushing the exhaust back into the car.

In both cases, modern hybrid WRC cars built largely of carbon composites burnt quickly and massively. The fire in today's Rally Japan left very little of Sordo's original car.

While the result was not nearly as worrying, Sordo's fire was not the day's only dramatic incident. WRC2 driver Kajetan Kajetanowicz carried too much speed out of a long tunnel, losing control on the quick corner that followed and crashing. A video from the championship shows that the massive difference in light inside and outside of the tunnel may have been partially to blame, with the corner nearly impossible to see on camera as Kajetanowicz approaches the end of the tunnel.

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