All-electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 wins 24th Rally del Golfo al Pacifico 2025

In what turned out to be a surprise for a lot of people, a full electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 just won the 24th running of the Rally Del Golfo Al Pacifico, run on regular roads across South America.

Now, this was a TSD rally, for time, speed, and distance, sometimes called a regularity rally. Basically you have to hit and actually compute for all the times, speeds, and distances you will need to run, because you are penalized for being too early or too late at control points.

That winning car, a Hyundai Ioniq 5, was not even the hot-hatch N.

World Car of the Year juror Carlos Sandoval and partner Carlos Quevedo, with support from Hyundai, ran the Ioniq 5 and took top place with only three weeks notice that they were going to be using that car. They made no special arrangements and just planned out their charging points, which were generally destination charging of only seven kW.

“It was a logistics challenge, specially in a region with only a few destination chargers” said Señor Sandoval. “I did all the special logistics planning myself, after fulfilling all the safety and technical criteria established by the official motorsports federations in Mexico. oh and a bunch of stickers!”

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The Rally del Golfo al Pacifico has been run for 24 years, and the cars that joined this year include 1970 Ford Falcons, Subaru WRXs, and 1970s Porsche 911s. The only other electrified vehicle was a 2017 Cayenne E-Hybrid.

This is another badge of honor for the Hyundai Ioniq 5. This includes the sweep in 2022 of the World Car Awards with Overall World Car Award, World Electric Vehicle Award and World Car Design Award. To add to that, the motorsports-oriented Ioniq 5 N took the 2024 World Performance Car Awards.