NEUVILLE STORMS TO PORTUGAL WIN
HYUNDAI STAR IN COMM AND OF WRC
Some people… According to a few folk around the worldwide web, Rally Portugal must be struck from the calendar. The World Rally Championship must not be allowed back to mainland Europe’s westernmost stages. They are, you see, too rough. Too dangerous. And too likely to make the cars crash. I kid you not. Nonsense. Granted, there was a bit more bent metal coming out of round six than anywhere else this season, but we’re warming up now. It’s mid-year, the stakes and the speeds are rising. But two men showed it was entirely possible to get from start to finish without marking the machinery. Step forward Thierry Neuville and Nicolas Gilsoul.
Friday’s casualties
Ott Tanak started round six in pursuit of back-to-back wins, but just hours later into the event was on a plane home. The first three miles of the rally had been a continuation of Rally Argentina as he went quicker than any of his South American rivals. But then he came through a left-hander and found the road full of rocks.
Utterly committed to his line and with nowhere to go, the underside of the Toyota slammed into the boulders and sent the Yaris skywards. Unsurprisingly, the radiator was mortally wounded, Tanak’s rally run.
Initial suspicions of foul play were immediately dismissed – the rocks were laid on the line by Tanak’s title rivals Neuville and Sebastien Ogier running ahead of him.
“I had a good feeling here,” said Tanak. “I think we had the speed to win this one too.”
Toyota’s bad morning went further south one stage later when Jari-matti Latvala broke the front suspension on the sister car. Unlike in Argentina last month, the damage was contained to suspension, allowing J-ML to continue with the rest of the event.
While the team still has to run its analysis, the initial feeling is that the car should have taken this one. Whether it broke or was broken, the result was the same. Two Toyotas sidelined in as many stages; little wonder that the team’s sporting director Kaj Lindstrom went for a one-word description of Friday morning: “Disaster.”
Up front, the intensity of the competition was astonishing. For the first seven stages there was a new leader, with returning Hyundai star Hayden Paddon leading after SS2, dropping to third then racing back into first after the second stage of the afternoon loop.
Kris Meeke was another driver in and out of the lead for two stages, again, neither of which were back-to-back.
By the end of the day, both Paddon and Meeke were out of the running. The Kiwi landed himself in hospital after registering 15G when his i20 Coupe WRC stopped up against a culvert second time through Ponte de Lima.
Meeke made it through the afternoon, but in anything but a straightforward fashion. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing and, looking back, there’s little doubt that taking two spares for an afternoon on what would become the season’s roughest roads yet was probably a good idea. But the extra 20kg was calculated at a cost of around 10 seconds for the loop. Meeke went with one spare. And punctured on stage six. And stage seven.
What now? Regulations are quite clear. Cars must have four rotating wheels with inflated tyres. That’s on the road section. And the stages? That’s fair game. So, at the end of SS7, Meeke whipped the rubber-less rim off the car and bolted a delaminated and air-less Michelin into its place. He then set off on the 60-mile run down the motorway to Porto.
“We were doing 65km/h (40mph) all the way,” he said. “It’s a good job Michelin make such strong tyres…”
Arriving at Porto’s town stage, Meeke put the damaged rim back on and looped the streets twice, sending sparks flying to a backdrop of astonished appreciation from a slightly bemused crowd of thousands lining the stage.
Hours earlier, Meeke had sat down to lunch 4.6s behind leader Dani Sordo. By the end of the afternoon, he’d slipped to seventh, 1m18.7s off the front. The Dungannon man had done an exceptional job to contain the time loss, but he showed little or no interest in discussing his work.
Meeke’s consternation was compounded by the knowledge that he’d failed to capitalise on the closest thing the WRC will come to an open goal.
In the middle of what was fast becoming the season’s most bonkers Friday, Sebastien Ogier crashed. He was out on stage five. One stage later Andreas Mikkelsen’s Hyundai was slowed by power-steering failure; a further one stage later and he retired with no oil pressure.
Throw in a stage-seven puncture for Craig Breen’s Citroen – dropping him from third to eighth – and you’ve got day one covered.
The one that really surprised everybody and opened that goal up, was a crash that looked entirely innocuous. Turns out, the problems had started a corner before.
“There was a bank on the inside of a corner,” explained Ogier. “I thought it was just a bank with gravel on. I had ‘don’t cut’ in my notes, but I was a bit too early [turning in to the corner] and I decided to stay on the throttle and keep the speed because there was a small straight afterwards.
“Unfortunately it wasn’t just some gravel, there was a stump. We had a sharp impact when I braked for the next corner the [steering] armcame out and I could do nothing.”
Advantage Neuville
Ninth after the first gravel stage of the day, it’s a fair assumption Neuville wasn’t exactly clearing his diary for the end-of-leg press conference for the topthree crews. Yet there he was, sitting up on stage being asked about his Friday. And what’s more, he was the man in the middle. He was leading.
“Crazy day,” he murmured, as though he was still struggling to comprehend what was going on. There’s no doubt he’d benefited from issues for those ahead – but only four of those places had come his way by default. He’d earned the other four by changing his i20’s set-up to one he was more comfortable with for the afternoon. He then rolled the dice with six soft tyres on roads swept clean of sand to uncover a more abrasive base. And, just for good measure, the sun continued to shine, the rain stayed away and temperatures inched from the mid- to upper-twenties.
Nursing his covers through SS5, he was passed by team-mate Mikkelsen as fifth became sixth.
Enough was enough. Joint fastest with Breen in stage six, Neuville was then quickest of all on the rerun Ponte de Lima.
“I thought my decision was quite brave for the tyres when we were leaving service,” Neuville said. “It was. After the first stage, they were 75 per cent gone. But then I took another decision, and decided to push. I didn’t care for the tyres, I just drove flat-out and we made the fastest time. I really didn’t expect this position, but we have it and now I have to keep it.”
There was more surprise from the man sitting in second, 17.7s behind him. Elfyn Evans had cut a lonely and troubled figure after shakedown on Thursday. Running the set-up he’d honed at his pre-event test, the Welshman simply couldn’t get the Ford Fiesta anywhere near where it should be. In a stage just over a couple of miles long, he was near enough four seconds off the pace.
Like Neuville, he was brave – but Evans’ bravery took the form of sticking to his guns in terms of set-up. Unwilling to forget what he’d learned in two days of testing in pursuit of a psychological boost from a solid shakedown time; he set off on Friday morning hunting a longer-termgain.
Second fastest on the first gravel test, he’d hooked the Fiesta up. Only to drop it on SS3. A spin cost him nine seconds and he then felt the car was moving around too much towards the end of the next stage.
The afternoon got better and better and ended with second quickest in Ponte de Lima and a rise through the ranks that was bettered only by the Belgian ahead of his second spot.
“After shakedown I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I was so far away and I couldn’t get a time close [to quickest]. I was a bit lost, to be honest. That was hard, especially as that’s a shakedown where I’ve gone pretty well in the past. But I stuck to the set-up. We found something in the test that worked and I trusted it.”
Question was, did he trust it enough to challenge a driver on top of his game right now? Saturday’s opener was inconclusive – Neuville won by 0.9s. The second stage was very much more encouraging from the Brit’s perspective with Evans cutting the difference by 5.9s. Game on?
Game off. Going into Amarante, the final morning stage, the leader pulled his belts tighter, adjusted his glasses and offered an unruffled wink. He then progressed 0.75s faster through each and every one of the following 23 miles. And sat down to lunch with his lead at a tenth of a second under half a minute.
Job done. Almost. The job description changed through the second half of the rally as Neuville moved into a control mode, pushing where he felt comfortable, but saving everything for
Evans the power stage secured everywhere second but, else. typically hard on himself, wanted to find more time – especially in Amarante. "I was a bit disappointed in there,” he said. “I rely quite a lot on the front of the car and I was struggling a little bit when I was down on grip. It’s the same for Seb [Ogier], but he’s Sebastien Ogier… We’re getting there and, for sure, this has been positive.”
The stewards strike
The fight for the bottom step of the podium was spiced up by a 10s penalty added to Sordo’s time after he hit the tyres in the Porto street stage. Instead of going into Sunday a handful of seconds up in third, he was fourth. And then fifth after he was passed by a charging Esapekka Lappi. Ultimately, Sordo couldn’t match the northern Europeans for commitment or speed on the final day – there’s nothing like a local derby to get the blood up. And Teemu Suninen’s Fiesta against Lappi’s Yaris was a cracker.
As Suninen prepared himself to depart service for the final time, M-sport’s deputy team principal Rich Millener (#1 Malcolm Wilson had flown out of Porto first thing, bound for Bentley and Silverstone’s Blancpain round) arrived at the side of the car. Sensing apprehension, he gave him a reassuring slap on the back and told him they’d talk after the first one. Everything, Millener said, would be fine.
Lappi’s impossible to read and was giving nothing away at the end of the first Sunday test. He was fastest, but the smile was thin as he looked at the time board. “Nice drive,” he said of his own efforts, “but one second is not enough. We need more.”
It wasn’t even a second. It was sixtenths. Then it was 0.3s, then 1.2s. Two down and he was still nine seconds short of his rival.
And then came a Suninen breakthrough. He stopped the rot and took 1.7s back. “I have been driving efficiently,” he said, “and now I’ve been driving quickly.”
Even with a 10.4s advantage and just the seven-mile power stage to run, Suninen wasn’t sure. “I’m not going to think about the podium,” he said.
One stage later, he was on the podium and just 7.3s off his team- mate and runner-up Evans.
Across the day, Lappi was 3.7s faster, but it mattered little. Fourth place beckoned.
Ultimately, Sordo lost his podium on pace, not due to the penalty. He couldn’t match Suninen, but he would have kept his nose ahead of Lappi had the stewards not decided otherwise. The irony was, the stewards then intervened in favour of Sordo by hitting Lappi with 10s of his own for a similar tyre-whacking offence. Finally, Dani was fourth and the Finn fifth.
The talk of penalties soured the Koreans’ success slightly, but Hyundai’s event was nothing like as tough as Citroen’s. Ostberg and Breen were sixth and seventh. The Norwegian was warming up for the next round in Sardinia, while the Irishman was robbed of a result by a puncture and forced to run as roadsweeper at the front of the field.
And Meeke? He had a monstrous accident that ruled him out of the rest of the event ( see story p2-3).
Neuville might have won by miles in Portugal, but success is measured in inches. And on Friday those inches were the ones between the same rocks that ruined Tanak’s rally and the radiator on Neuville’s car. Triumph was that close to disaster in Portugal.
But Neuville and Hyundai earned this one. They showed supreme speed when it was needed and then dialed that back to the sort of consistency that kept Thierry clear of the problems that befell those around him.
In short, he drove the drive of a champion. Six down and seven to go, he’s got himself a useful points lead. Now we’ll see if he can keep it.