Rally Italia Sardegna will host the World Rally Championship for what is currently scheduled to be the final time when the season's sixth round runs in early June, with the event slated to relocate to a base near Rome from 2027. Before that move, Hyundai Motorsport is sending one of its deepest entries of the season to a rally that has tended to suit the i20 N Rally1 on gravel.
Thierry Neuville opens his thirteenth year with the Korean manufacturer at Sardegna alongside full-time teammate Adrien Fourmaux. The third Hyundai seat — rotated through 2026 between Dani Sordo, Esapekka Lappi and Hayden Paddon — goes to all three at different points of the calendar, and Sardegna is one of the rounds where the brand has historically tilted toward veteran island know-how.
Sordo, who spent 2025 contesting the Portuguese Rally Championship, is back in a Rally1 car after a year on the sidelines.
"After a year away contesting the Portuguese Rally Championship, I am very pleased to be back in the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car for 2026," the Spaniard said when his return was announced.
New Zealander Hayden Paddon returns to Hyundai's top-tier WRC programme after eight years away from the championship. Paddon, the 2016 Rally Argentina winner, has spent the intervening seasons winning everything available to him in the European Rally Championship and at home in New Zealand. His brief, according to the team, is to back up Neuville and Fourmaux in their title fights and maximise team points in the manufacturers' championship.
Esapekka Lappi's call-up has been one of the more emotional storylines of Hyundai's 2026. The Finn, who thought his top-flight WRC career was over after being released at the end of 2023, told the team he was "excited like a little kid" when team principal Cyril Abiteboul rang to offer him a part-season deal.
The championship picture going into Sardegna is finely poised. Toyota's Sebastien Ogier won Rally Portugal three weeks ago when an early tyre puncture in the closing stages was overcome by his veteran instincts, only for the Frenchman to suffer his own puncture late on and gift the win to Hyundai's Neuville — the manufacturer's first victory of 2026. Kalle Rovanpera and Elfyn Evans are within a single rally's worth of points of the leaders, and M-Sport's Gregoire Munster has at least one stage win this year to remind everyone that Sardegna's rough, rocky stages can throw up a result if the heat hammers tyre wear.
The Italian round will run its traditional Friday-to-Sunday format with the bulk of stages in the north of the island, including the long Monte Lerno stage that has decided plenty of Sardegnas before. Heat and rocks are the two enemies — the rocky linings of the stages chew through tyres on the second pass, and crews have learned to back off five or six percent on Saturday afternoon to bank an opportunity at Sunday's Power Stage.
Sardegna is also a key test for the new Rally1 Hybrid regulation set Hyundai has spent the winter refining. The team has stated publicly through 2025 that it remains "hopeful" of continuing in WRC beyond 2026, but its long-term commitment is still tied to whether the new regulations being framed for 2027 onward give cost-conscious manufacturers a viable platform. That places Sardegna in a strange spot — the last visit to a beloved venue, the final outing of a five-strong driver roster on these stages, and the closing months of a regulation cycle that has shaped the modern WRC.
For Sordo, Paddon and Lappi, it is also a chance to remind a championship that wrote them off, in their different ways, that they can still drive a Rally1 car as fast as anyone. A double Sardegna podium in 2022 sits on the team's mantelpiece as proof of what it has done on this island before. Repeating it in 2026 would be a fitting send-off — and a useful manufacturers' haul before the M-Sport Fords and Toyota GR Yarises arrive on the smoother gravel of Greece a month later.
---
*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/wrc-rally-italia-sardegna-2026-preview-hyundai-sordo-paddon-lappi-final-sardinia). Visit for full coverage.*
