High Tire Wear Blamed for Rally Paraguay Problems

"Not exactly like this. There were so many punctures and so many cars out, and practically something happened on every stage," said Toyota's Deputy Team Principal Kankkunen, when asked if he remembered such a tense day.

"Usually, it's like this in Africa. So I'm a bit surprised how challenging today was," Oliver Solberg commented.

"Unfortunately, no. I don't think it's ever been this bad," championship leader Elfyn Evans replied when asked if he was surprised by the number of problems.

"It was a tough call. Obviously, there was a lot of discussion. [Co-driver] Scott [Martin] was for continuing, I was for stopping. And for those 20 kilometers, I repeatedly thought we'd made the wrong decision. But he's an optimist, and in the end, he turned out to be right. So I have to apologize for doubting him," Evans explained.

Hyundai's Adrien Fourmaux, who experienced three tire failures, including a double rear puncture on Stage 7, added: "I'm very happy with my driving and the pace I had on the stages. It's really a shame that we have weak tires and three delaminations. It's a pity when you get a puncture after hitting a rock or if you have too much wear. That's logical. But when the tires are brand new, that's a very big problem. It's like playing in a casino."

"There was more action than we perhaps expected. I think a lot of that is down to the punctures and delaminations that caused all the drama. It keeps everyone on their toes, and the schedule is relentless. Stage after stage. So it's a bit different from what we're used to in many rallies, but that's good," Millener said. "We were hoping that this delamination issue would disappear. Clearly, the difficult thing is that you can't test in all these different places for the exact conditions, and here this year it's very hot and humid, and we have very long stages. It's frustrating, but at this point, we need to stay calm and do a detailed analysis," he added.

Asked to explain the failures, Hankook's Steven Cho said: "What we saw this morning was much greater wear than we expected, much more than last year. When you see heavy wear, it means it's very abrasive and very rough. "Today's sections were really long. So, with the higher temperature compared to last year and the type of stages with a lot of compacted clay and protruding bedrock, it was very tough on the tires. We, as well as the drivers and teams, found that the aggressiveness of the roads was greater than I think anyone expected. "We'll have to look at this together tonight. Tomorrow should be a bit easier, but it's still quite tough. We know Paraguay is tough, and I think we're also learning about Paraguay. Of course, we were here last year, but the conditions were very different from then and from what everyone expected. "I'm not surprised by what we saw with the soft tires this morning because they were all completely worn out. You could see that the rubber was completely gone, and there was nothing left of it, and from there, naturally, comes the delamination. We'll have to take a closer look at how the hard tires from the afternoon look. I haven't heard anything about that yet. But if we see high levels of wear, which I'm sure we will, I think the delamination will be due to that. "My feeling is that the improvements we made have improved the hard tire. The main problem here is really high tire wear."