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The original was posted on /r/cars by /u/hatsune_aru on 2025-05-20 04:26:47+00:00.
It looks like not a lot of the English-speaking community has picked this up, so I wanted to do a quick write up.
So, for the headline crash: during the Hyundai N Festival N2 Cup Masters championship, a massive 4-car crash happened at an estimated 110km/h: https://youtu.be/7LcXpZj4IY8?t=16818 (timestamped; 4:40:22 if it doesn't work)
Note car 017 is the first to crash; you can see them spinning out shortly after cutting to the drone view.
Unfortunately, while nobody was killed, there are rumors that one racer has suffered 3 fractured bones.
Now for some context behind the drama:
The Hyundai N Festival
This is an annual event sponsored by Hyundai (and a few other companies like Kumho tire) and operated by "Playground" (just a separate LLC sponsored by Hyundai) where they have sponsor booths, food trucks, showcasing cars, etc. The highlight of the festival are the spec race series.
There are three classes: eN1, N1, and N2. eN1 is run with moderately modified Ioniq 5N chassis with a rollcage, suspension, brakes, widebody, and mild aero.. N1 is similarly modified, but with Elantra N instead
N2 Cup Woes
N2 is the problem child. N2 is a mostly stock Elantra N with a bucket seat, half-rollcage, steering wheel, brake pads, and a spec semislick tire.
No suspension modification of any kind, nor brake modifications are allowed. The point is that Hyundai is marketing a mostly-stock Elantra N can be driven in a wheel to wheel race and still be okay--if you're active in the US track scene, in fact it mostly is... on a track day.
Since the series began, the N2 cup was shrouded in some hot water. Almost every year, there was an incident where tires were debeading off of the wheels. While nobody has publicly blasted Hyundai for these spec rules, it's pretty obvious that stock suspension with stock roll stiffness causes way too much camber loss and thus too much rollover unless you run fairly high tire pressures. If you watch the original video and wind back to some random point in the N2 race, you will see how bad the tire rollover is.
The Brake Situation
The Hyundai Elantra N (Avante N in Korea) in the Korean domestic market comes with the usual 1-pot floating calipers that's also standard in the US. However, in Korea, a 4-pot fixed piston brake caliper supplied by HL Mando is is also available as an option.
Since last year, Hyundai has been trying to mandate this brake option as part of the N2 cup presumably to advertise it, but ever since its introduction, multiple racers have complained that after only a few laps of use, the brakes malfunction and lose all brake functionality. The common symptom is brakes going extremely squishy, absolutely no brake functionality, with "0 bars" of brake pressure shown on telemetry.
This is an example of the failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIkyc2bjU7Y
FYI this is a tech youtuber that does this for fun, so don't judge his driving skills too much.
This concern was brought up in the N2 series and in the offseason repeatedly, and Hyundai was adamant that the mechanics haven't bled the brakes properly with race fluid, and additionally commented worse drivers are overusing the brakes and thus overheating them much easily. Conveniently, the people who crashed due to brake failure were weaker drivers. However, the cars are maintained by a few garages that support dozens of Cup cars each, so blaming the mechanics seems like a horrible cop out.
During last year's stint while the brake situation was being investigated, Hyundai recommended reverting back to the 1 pot floating caliper stock brakes for a few of the rounds, and that caused the issue to go away. The drivers did comment that the 4 pot brakes do have more brake power and that the 1 pot brakes do suffer from more brake pad fade, but said this type of total loss in brake was not seen. Ironically, before the 4P was pushed upon everyone, nobody complained about the 1P brakes.
Due to Hyundai's response, a famous youtuber that's also very competitive in the scene had declared he is not participating in this year's round 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XKV8zmHUNc
Note that in the N1 series, a 4 piston AP Racing brake kit is used.
Disaster on Round 1
The race weekend started with eN1 and N1, the "normal" races and things seemed to go smoothly.
During the N2 race, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong long before the crash.
For example, 4:35:25 shows a highly ranked racer (김태희, 006) going off-roading because she went wide after not being able to brake enough before the corner.
Right before the crash, 4:40:22 shows her going wide likely due to brake failure
Finally, disaster strikes and the 4 cars crash right after each other.
Now it looks as though some fluid was spilled because it seems highly unlikely that all four cars decided to spin out right at the same spot at the same time. This may be hearsay, but folks have claimed marshals said there were no fluids on track at that spot.
From what is circulating all across the Korean car sphere, it appears that all four cars got brake failure in that particularly harsh part of the track, since it's a downhill heavy braking zone.
This video appears to be from an uninvolved racer after that eventful race: https://youtu.be/kgHad1Uk_zA. Look at 4:08 where the racer applies full brakes and yet the car appears to not stop at all.
Aftermath
The crash happened in the N2 Cup Masters division (basically upper league), and in the following N2 Cup Challenger division race (lower league) more than 10 cars boycotted the race and one car pitted after the parade lap in protest.
Hyundai has released a statement that they are committed to a thorough investigation with full transparency.
The tech youtuber mentioned earlier has released a video after the crash mentioning that he decided not to attend the race from the get go due to Hyundai's handling of the matter since last year.
Currently the community is waiting for the investigation and is outraged at the quality of the supposed upgraded brakes that appear to be less durable than the standard floating caliper brakes.