NEUVILLE: WATERY CRASH WON’ T AFFECT FRANCE PACE
Last year’s Tour de Corse winner Thierry Neuville is adamant that crashing his i20 Coupe WRC into a river won’t affect his pace at this week’s fourth round of the World Rally Championship.
The Belgian went off the road near the end of his day of running just south of Bastia last week. The car slid down a bank and landed in the water. Despite that crash, Neuville is determined to return to the top of the table, having led the championship by 10 points after round two in Sweden.
“Tour de Corse is one of my personal highlights of the season,” he said. “We have some good memories from this rally across the years. We have won twice, including last year’s WRC victory, so I am hoping for another competitive weekend. We had an accident towards the end of the pre-event test but that won’t change our approach to this rally. It is a really demanding event for crews and teams but we’re determined to strengthen our position in both championships.”
Neuville wasn’t the only driver whose test was interrupted, but Kris Meeke’s hinderance was far less dramatic. The Citroen star’s first day back on pure asphalt this season was all too reminiscent of Monte Carlo.
Meeke told MN: “We got caught in some weather on the first day of the test. The temperatures dropped to two degrees and the snow came. Not far up the road we were using it was white with just the two tracks. We really needed the Monte-spec soft tyre, but we didn’t have them because you’re not allowed those in Corsica.”
Meeke was relaxed about the continuation of winter, explaining that they were running on a stage at 550 metres – which is still 300 metres down on this week’s Tour de Corse high point. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “They were pretty freak conditions. It will get a bit cooler up at the top this week, but we’re looking at 18 degrees or something on the event. It was tricky, but you’re always learning something on the test.”