Teemu Suninen hits his first success of the 2022 WRC2 season on the Catalunyan roads in RallyRACC Catalunya – Costa Daurada with Hyundai Motorsport N and now he looks cautious optimism to the 2023 season where he could be a potential replacer for Estonian´s Ott Tänak who announced he is leaving the Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT team after this year.
This was the first win of the season for Suninen and Hyundai´s WRC2 bet. The Finn had already come close to success in both Portugal and Finland but on both occasions, the victory had vanished. In Rally de Portugal due to an unfortunate off the road on the final stage of the rally and on his home rally of Rally Finland he got disqualified for a non-homologated bumper which was found to be underweighted on his Hyundai i20 N Rally2.
Suninen took the rally lead quite early on in the rally after being fastest on the WRC2 field on stage four and held on to it since that to win, he also claimed a total of nine stage wins and the tactic was to take more risks on the first leg and drive more cautiously on the second leg of the stages, due to dirt being dragged out on the roads.
“This success is very positive for me, we have shown that we have a car which can win and this is very important to me. I ran more aggressively in the morning loops where I tried to push, while on the afternoon loops I ran more carefully, trying to avoid punctures and stones..” Suninen said.
“I hope this win will help me for next season. At the moment for 2023, everything is in the making, I would like to race with a Rally1 car. Also, I have no children so I could run safely all season and my manager is talking to the teams now, so I have a lot of faith in his works.”
