NEUVILLE KNOWS SPAIN TEST IS CRUCIAL
‘Kristoffersson looks to rallying challenge’ WRX champion on stages, p16
Thierry Neuville has admitted Friday’s opening day of Rally of Spain action could be crucial to his hopes of lifting this year’s World Rally Championship title.
The Belgian’s Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC will be the first into the gravel stages where, if the forecasted warm, dry weather prevails, he is expected to suffer the biggest time loss of the three title protagonists.
“The good thing is that my main rivals are very close to me,” Neuville told MN. “So the conditions shouldn’t be too different.”
Sebastien Ogier, seven points down on Neuville, and Ott Tanak, 21 off the front, will follow him into Friday.
Neuville said: “The opening day on gravel will be particularly vital in setting the tone for the rest of the weekend, so we have to start strongly. We know we have had some deficiencies on Tarmac this season, but we have worked hard on that and hope we can see the fruits of that hard work.”
Hyundai brings new parts to the weekend’s asphalt stages with new geometry and a centre differential set-up aimed firmly at offering more stability and less understeer from the Tarmac-specification i20.
“These two final rallies of the season are massively important for us in the championship fight,” said Neuville. “We have lost some ground in the past couple of events, but we are still on top and we won’t give up without a fight.”
Still short on development mileage, M-sport’s latest engine parts won’t make it to Spain, but should be in time for Australia. Despite that, Ogier was upbeat following his pre-event running in Spain last week.
“I like Spain, I like this event a lot,” he said. “The championship is getting really hot now, but we go to this week on a high after winning in Wales and reducing the gap – but we need to deliver another strong result again this week if we want to defend our crown. You can count on Julien [Ingrassia, co-driver] and I to give it everything.”
Tanak’s retirement from the lead in Wales three weeks ago on Saturday makes the Estonian’s task much more straightforward in Salou.
“We just have to win the last two rallies and see what happens,” said Tanak. “I can be confident about our performance on both gravel and asphalt, as we have been strong on both surfaces recently. We had a good pre-event test where we were able to work on some things to make everything as good as possible before the rally.”