{"id":859815,"date":"2026-08-18T16:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/859815\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T16:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:44:12","slug":"esapekka-lappi-to-rejoin-hyundai-for-wrc-rally-chile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/859815\/","title":{"rendered":"Esapekka Lappi to rejoin Hyundai for WRC Rally Chile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hyundai has confirmed its driver line-up for Rally Chile with Esapekka Lappi<\/a> set to pilot the third factory entry at the gravel event next month.<\/p>\n

The Korean manufacturer has decided to cycle through three crews across its third i20 N Rally1 car this season with Lappi, New Zealand\u2019s Hayden Paddon<\/a> and veteran Dani Sordo<\/a> each enjoying spells behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

Lappi was unsure if he would receive another opportunity this year after he and co-driver Enni Malkonen<\/a> retired from Rally Finland after rolling out of fifth position during stage four of the fast gravel event.<\/p>\n

A matter of hours after the rally, Hyundai announced that it would hand the car to Padden for next week\u2019s Rally Paraguay, which will mark the New Zealander\u2019s first gravel outing of the season. Hyundai had previously shared the gravel rallies between Sordo and Lappi.<\/p>\n

Hyundai has now moved to clarify that Lappi will enjoy at least one more outing this year in Chile from 10-13 September.<\/p>\n

\"Esapekka <\/p>\n

Esapekka Lappi last entered Rally Finland with Enni Malkonen<\/p>\n

Photo by: McKlein Photography \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the hot seat Esapekka Lappi and Enni Malkonen return to our line-up for Rally Chile,\u201d read a short post from Hyundai Motorsport<\/a> on social media.<\/p>\n

The news arrives just days after Lappi and Malkonen successfully defended their Finnish Rally Championship crown after winning Ralli Kitee last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough this achievement isn\u2019t comparable to winning the World Rally Championship, or necessarily even a WRC round, we never come to these rallies to mess around \u2013 we always drive to win. We take it completely seriously,\u201d said Lappi.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, it\u2019s probably expected that we\u2019ll take care of this championship, but something can always happen, and as you get older, your pace can slow down. But we were still able to give the youngsters a run for their money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lappi has contested Rally Chile on three previous attempts with his best result being a run to sixth while driving for the Citroen factory squad in the inaugural WRC round in the South American nation in 2019. The Finn has shown pace in Chile for Hyundai in 2023 and 2024 but retired on both occasions.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hyundai has confirmed its driver line-up for Rally Chile with Esapekka Lappi set to pilot the third factory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,30330,219028,429953,35539,806,805,803,804,95139,85,10277],"class_list":["post-859815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chile","tag-esapekka-lappi","tag-esapekka-lappi-to-rejoin-hyundai-for-wrc-rally-chile","tag-hyundai-motorsport","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-rally-chile","tag-sports","tag-wrc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}