We’ve heard that the Hyundai i20 N hot hatch is set to exit production next month, and even if it will remain available in Australia into 2027, it’ll still be a shame to see the first generation of this iconic little performance hatch go.
The news means customers soon won’t be able to order and specify a new i20 N; instead they’ll have to choose from whichever cars dealers have in stock. It’s by no means an indication that Hyundai’s N division is slowing down, but it’s fair to expect future N products to look quite different to the diminutive i20.
There have even been reports that a new i20 N is in development with a hybrid powertrain. We don’t know when it’s due for release, but we do know that Hyundai isn’t looking to push it into the luxury car world.
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Accessibility is key, and that’ll continue to be the theme for the Korean brand’s future performance products, much as the i20 N has long been synonymous with fantastic bang-for-your-buck sports-oriented motoring. For that reason, we’ve decided to take an i20 N to the racetrack to revisit it in its natural habitat.
Yes, a normal week-long road test would have been just as thorough as any other CarExpert review, but it’s not every day you get the chance to treat a car to a real performance-focused send-off.
So here we’ll attempt to break down the i20 N in a circuit setting, which is supposedly where it’s at home, and endeavour to paint a picture of what your first track day might look like if you take your affordable Hyundai N-car for a spin.
Now, I’m not claiming to be a fast driver by any means, nor am I here to teach anyone how to beat Oscar Piastri. But a racetrack is the ideal place to test your and your car’s limits in a safe and controlled environment, and if you’ve ever yearned for a track-day experience, we encourage you to look into local opportunities to see what it’s all about – as many Hyundai N Festival-goers do.
And no, in case you’re wondering, this is not a sponsored article – it’s simply a recount of a track day, rather than a traditional review, to send off this generation of i20 N.
For transparency, we borrowed the i20 N from Hyundai as part of a standard week-long loan, which just happened to coincide with a track day. I also personally paid to participate in the event, just as the general public does.
With that all cleared up, here’s how it all went down.
The car
The Hyundai i20 N should need no introduction, but in case you’re unfamiliar, we’ll take a moment to break it down.
Arriving in Australia in late 2021, the third-generation Hyundai i20 is built in Turkey and sold locally only in one high-performance N trim. Fortunately, it’s still one of the cheapest performance cars you can buy today.
After a series of price increases in recent months, it is now listed at $38,500 before on-road costs, about $3000 more than when it launched. A minor update was rolled out for 2025, bringing no major changes beyond slightly tweaked aesthetics inside and out, a new alloy wheel design, and Hyundai’s suite of connected services.
That means its mechanicals are practically identical to when the car was launched. Under the bonnet is a 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine producing 150kW of power and 275Nm of torque, running on regular 91-octane fuel and returning official combined fuel consumption of 6.9L/100km – that’ll be important later on.
Drive is exclusively sent to the front wheels, and – uniquely for a modern car – it’s only available with a six-speed manual transmission. No automatic here.
2026 Hyundai i20 N equipment highlights:
- 18-inch forged alloy wheels
- Tyre pressure monitoring
- Space-saver spare
- Rain-sensing wipers
- Heated, power-folding exterior mirrors
- Rear privacy glass
- Active variable exhaust with Normal, Sport, Sport+ modes
- 6 drive modes (Eco, Normal, Sport, N, Custom 1, Custom 2)
- Reflector LED headlights
- Automatic high-beam
- Leather-wrapped steering wheel
- Leather-wrapped shifter
- Bose sound system
- Sports seats
- Cloth seat upholstery
- 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster
- 10.25-inch touchscreen infotainment system
- Wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
- DAB+ digital radio
- Satellite navigation
- 1 x front USB-C outlet
- 1 x rear USB-C outlet
- Proximity entry with push-button start
- Single-zone climate control
- Electrochromic rear-view mirror
- LED interior lighting
- Bluelink connected car services
Standard safety equipment highlights:
- 6 airbags, incl:
- Autonomous emergency braking
- Blind-spot monitoring
- Front and rear parking sensors
- Intelligent speed limit assist
- Lane-keep assist
- Lane Following Assist (lane centring)
- Rear cross-traffic alert
- Rear occupant alert
- Reversing camera
At 4075mm long, the i20 N is a light car comparable in size to a Toyota Yaris, but it doesn’t have nearly as many direct rivals as that would suggest. At this price point and performance level, its only real competitor is the Volkswagen Polo GTI, an auto-only model that isn’t available with a manual transmission.
Importantly, unlike most auto brands, Hyundai Australia backs its performance models including the i20 N with a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty (seven years if you service within its dealer network) that will not be voided by racetrack use – if your car is standard (ie: unmodified) and used in non-competitive, non-timed motorsport events.
That’s partly why Hyundai’s N-fest events are so popular, but also because they allow N-car owners to drive at pace on track among like-minded people, in a weekend-long carnival-style atmosphere with a host of off-track activities.
Of course, our track day was also strictly non-competitive, but the N Festival events are well worth investigating for any N owners (including i20 N, i30 N, and Ioniq 5 N) looking to get their track fix.
A full breakdown of the Hyundai i20 N’s price and specs is available here.
The track
Those relatively new to motorsport in Australia may not be familiar with the location for our track day, but it was once one of Victoria’s most prominent racing facilities.
Calder Park Raceway is located 24km north-west of Melbourne’s CBD, directly off the Calder Freeway near the suburb of Keilor. It began life as a dirt track before a bitumen surface was laid, enabling the first official race meeting on January 14, 1962.
It was then purchased by race driver and Melbourne tyre retailer Bob Jane in the early 1970s, who oversaw regular road racing, drag racing, and even Rallycross events that utilised the infield section of the original circuit.
Various high-profile events took place at the facility until as recently as 2001. Most notable were the Australian V8 Supercars Championship, held sporadically between 1969 and 2001; the international World Touring Car Championship in 1987; and even the Australian Grand Prix before it moved to Adelaide as a Formula 1 event in 1985.
But perhaps the most iconic feature of the facility is the 1.8km-long oval track known as the Thunderdome. An unmissable feature when travelling along the Calder Freeway, the Thunderdome was part of Mr Jane’s grand plans to bring America’s massively popular NASCAR stock-car race series to Australia.
It was completed in 1987 and began hosting races shortly after, combining both the oval and the existing National Circuit. NASCAR would hold a non-championship exhibition race at the Thunderdome in early 1988, marking the first time a NASCAR event had ever been staged outside of North America.
This event, like a handful of events held as part of various Australian-based series, including AUSCAR (Australian Stock Car Auto Racing), utilised the oval track only. If 1.8km doesn’t sound all that long, that’s because it isn’t; the oval’s unofficial lap record is just 28.2 seconds, set by NASCAR legend Richard Petty in a test session before the real race.
The last events held at the Thunderdome were in 1999, followed by a few more years of races on the National Circuit. There was then nearly 15 years of general inactivity at Calder Park, with the exception of legal off-street drag racing on the facility’s existing drag strip.
In 2023, under the ownership of Bob’s son, Rodney, Calder Park was repaired and upgraded sufficiently to allow club- and state-level motorsport events to return to the venue. This would be the state in which the National Circuit would remain for our track day.
Map source: Will Pittenger
The National Circuit has only existed since 1986, as it was created by extending the main straight of the existing Club Circuit to nearly 1km in total. The result is a 2.3km track with seven right-hand and three left-hand turns, with an official race lap record of 52.69 seconds set in 1986.
It may not appear to be the most technical track on paper, but it includes elevation changes, a mix of low- and medium-speed corners, and varied surface types. The main straight doubles as Calder Park’s drag strip, which means the last sweeping turn briefly transitions from standard bitumen to concrete coated in tyre rubber.
The venue’s facilities are certainly showing their age, but the few garages and other ancillary buildings are of acceptable quality. There are also decent viewing areas for the National Circuit, primarily a tall earth mound next to the main straight, accessible via a long flight of stairs.
The general public is welcome to watch on track days, as they are for Calder Park’s regular drag racing and drift events.
Our track day would be hosted by Drive Events, a Victorian business that also hosts drive days at Phillip Island and Broadford. An all-encompassing track driving school is also run at each event, open to anyone, though it isn’t mandatory.
The day
Naturally, the full track-day process starts well before you actually hit the track.
Given this particular i20 N, like any other press car, belongs to its manufacturer, we conducted our due diligence and kindly requested permission from Hyundai to take it to the track.
To our delight, it had no issues with our track-day plans, and only asked whether the car would need tyres afterwards. Otherwise, it left us to our own devices.
This was my first real taste of Hyundai’s support for track activities, and it’s refreshing for a brand that builds performance cars to actually encourage its petrol-head customers to drive them as they’re meant to be driven.
With that locked in, all that was left to do was confirm our details and sign up for the track day.
Depending on how regularly you attend track days and who hosts them, you may need to pay for a day licence with Motorsport Australia. As a relative track-day newbie, I opted for this, which slightly increased registration costs and required additional paperwork, but it’s relatively painless and essential to being allowed on-track.
Mind you, I have been on track before at media events, most notably at Sydney Motorsport Park in various Audi RS performance models. I therefore felt comfortable enough to head out on track without tuition – there’s no shame in signing yourself up for a track driving school, though, and it may well keep you out of trouble.
The Sunday track day eventually rolled around. Bright and early, I stopped for fuel on my way to Calder Park, where I parked up next to my colleague Josh Nevett, who was taking part in his personal Mazda MX-5.
We then headed in for registration, where because our road cars were slower than some of the other toys in attendance, we were placed in the slowest of the six speed groups. A mandatory driver and safety briefing followed – the importance of which cannot be understated – before it was time to prepare for the track.
Our group was the first to head out at 9:00am. It’s never easy to be first out, especially in an unfamiliar car and with limited experience at that track, so our first session would focus primarily on exploratory laps to familiarise ourselves with the layout and our machinery.
The day would consist of six 15-minute sessions, the same format as every other group. That meant there was no need to rush into lap-record attempts, so we opted to take it slow, learning the braking points (particularly at the end of the long main straight) and finding where the car is comfortable.
Fortunately, there’s no better car for that than an i20 N, for several reasons.
A relatively low power output makes it difficult to get yourself into serious trouble, while its front-drive configuration makes it more manageable and predictable. That allows you to focus on learning the track instead of trying to tame a beast.
The brake feel is also strong out of the box, and the steering weight makes it easier to be smooth with your inputs. Of course, we spent the entire day in the car’s N mode, which unlocks the best of the i20’s engine performance, steering feel, and exhaust volume, among other things.
This is easily done using dedicated buttons on the steering wheel. The i20 N also has an automatic rev-matching function on downshifts, which gives you one less thing to think about – you can turn this off and manually heel-toe shift, but we found the throttle response a little sluggish when doing so.
The more laps we did, the more comfortable we felt. The tyres, which were cold and slippery at the start, gripped nicely as they warmed up. Pirelli rubber is standard, which is very worthwhile regardless of the car’s outright speed.
Before we knew it, the marshals waved the chequered flag to signal the session’s end, as the next group headed out on track as we trundled back into the pits; the days are typically run to a tight schedule.
We then had a wait of just over one hour before the next session, which is a fair bit of downtime but gives the car and its brakes plenty of time to cool while we ate and hydrated before heading back out.
Soon enough, our group was called and we were once again lining up in the pit lane. This time, with more knowledge of the track and the car under our belt, it was time to wind up the speed and start to see what the car was properly capable of.
The i20 responded well. It handled more aggressive turns with composure, showing well-calibrated power delivery to the front wheels, while brake pedal feel remained consistent despite the harder braking required at higher speeds.
In fact, we were beginning to consistently reach 200km/h before hitting the brakes on the main straight, which somehow felt like a real achievement. It’d be wrong to say this wasn’t daunting, though the car’s stability control system kept things in check without sapping all the fun.
It allowed me to continue finding the car’s limits without fear of ending up on the grass or worse, taking turns faster, determining which gears were ideal for each turn, and continuing to build my comfort level.
Of course, you need to be conscious of the other cars on the track – everyone is there for a different reason (fun, testing, etc), making it important to leave ample room when passing and keep an eye out for faster cars behind.
Any doubts that 15 minutes on track at a time was not enough were put to rest by the third or fourth session, as the sum of our time on track slowly started to show in how tired we felt. It was an hour and a half in total, after all.
Track-day regulars are no doubt more accustomed to that, but one thing that caught us off guard was fuel, because the time spent at full throttle was quickly draining the i20’s 40-litre tank.
We arrived with a full tank of 95-octane, which seemed appropriate given the minimal extra cost over the car’s 91 RON requirement. The car performed well on 95, and after averaging roughly 26L/100km for the day so far, a splash-and-dash at the nearby service station was needed before the final session.
Keep in mind that Hyundai claims a fuel consumption of 6.9L/100km in a mix of normal highway and urban driving. The i20 N’s significantly higher fuel consumption isn’t surprising in a track environment, where fuel is just another expense.
We refueled with 91 RON for the last session to assess how it affected performance. Suffice to say the engine wasn’t quite as peppy as before, as evidenced by the fact the i20 N struggled to hit 190km/h on the main straight.
There’s no doubt it was still quick, and that 91 would save you money in the long run, but the exercise also showed you become more perceptive of any changes in the car after five sessions of driving.
We came to appreciate several other things by the end of the day. One is the i20 N’s incredibly well-balanced chassis, which gave me very little to think about while controlling the car through each turn. Of course, disabling stability control will give you greater control if you’re game.
It gave me the confidence to carry more and more speed through each turn, with the fast right-left kink of the National Circuit’s turns four and five being my favourite section for that reason. But I think I could’ve gone faster if I hadn’t been avoiding the kerbs to protect the loan car.
The gearbox and clutch also performed without issue throughout the day. We found the latter’s weighting and engagement perfect for faster driving despite leaning towards the lighter side, which makes it so daily-friendly, and rowing through the gears was easy and consistent.
It’s also easy to judge which gear is best for each turn, as the car pulls or bogs as you accelerate out of turns, forcing you to adapt accordingly. There’s loads of headroom for learning how to corner quickly and cleanly in the i20 N, which is more than happy to help you figure it all out.
We did notice the brakes weren’t quite as sharp at the end of the day, which is no real surprise. You can destroy the brakes of many production cars in a couple of laps if you really try, but the i20 N’s still worked fine without the pedal going long, even if the heavy braking into turn one took a minor toll on them.
Similarly, the well-engineered steering and suspension systems not only stood up to plenty of abuse, but suited the task at hand well. Over the course of the day, the car remained relatively stable through turns, and the precise and communicative steering also helped us learn the car and then build trust as speed picked up.
The only shame was there aren’t more high-speed turns at Calder to fully exploit the little Hyundai’s well-sorted chassis setup.
The i20 N is not only a great all-rounder on the road, it makes it exceptionally easy to feel comfortable on track. And it felt like the car could very well have kept going into the night, but as a driver I was more than ready to wrap up.
Best of all, we drove the car home as if we’d spent the day shopping, and it felt the same as it did on the way to Calder.
The verdict
For someone who isn’t a racing driver but aspires to become a recreational weekend warrior on tarmac, the i20 N offers more than enough exposure to catch the track-day bug.
It’s a forgiving and easy car to drive, but it isn’t soft. Once the driver is comfortable and the speeds pick up, the i20 N only feels more at home, making you want to go faster, which only gets you more hooked.
You’ll know if you’ve caught the bug if you leave the track thinking about how you could’ve perfected that one turn, or how you could’ve gone a bit faster down the straight. These things will only make you want to come back again, and even if you aren’t thinking those things, the i20 N is still addictively fun.
It really is a package that’s hard to fault. And as good as its mechanicals are, the interior is just as solid.
The ergonomics are on point, the steering wheel’s size and finish perfectly match the car, and the sports seats have a real old-school feel to the way they hold you in place.
Of course, all that translates to the road, where the i20 N is a fun daily driver. Those seats stay supportive without being too firm or hard to get into or out of, while a decent tech suite will keep you safe and entertained. The firm suspension that makes it so much fun on track is also palatable in the suburbs.
We’ll miss it when it’s gone, because the i20 N is a proven, engaging compact performance hatch, and a dying breed these days. Now is the time if you want to get your hands on a brand-new example, and if you do we encourage getting involved in any non-competitive track activity to make the most of it.
That said, I’m now curious to find out how much more fun the larger and faster i30 N is on track. More power can only be a positive for tracks with such long straights and, if the i20 N is anything to go by, its bigger and more powerful brother will be a barrel of laughs at Calder.
And, of course, massive thanks to Hyundai for allowing us the opportunity.
