Dani Sordo has questioned team-mate Thierry Neuville’s approach to Rally Italy Sardinia, suggesting his approach was too risky for a driver chasing the World Rally Championship drivers’ title.
Neuville overshot a tight right-hander and slid off the road and down a bank on stage eight, getting stuck and retiring from third place.
After a fairly torrid start to Saturday morning in Sardinia for Sordo, gaining a place should have been good news. But he could only feel downbeat about his team-mate’s retirement.
That feeling was amplified by its visual impact: Sordo had to drive past Neuville’s stricken i20 N Rally1 to reach the finish of the Tula stage that ended Neuville’s rally.
“It was hard because when you saw someone went off, it’s not nice,” Sordo told DirtFish.
“But when it’s someone like this in your team, it’s even worse.”
Neuville’s retirement represents a missed opportunity in the title race. Before his off the championship leader was set to gain a further seven points on Elfyn Evans, who has struggled all weekend and has spent most of Rally Italy thus far running second-last of the Rally1 cars.
Instead, Evans can now close the gap to 14 points before Sunday and powerstage points are factored in.
That missed opportunity was front and center of Sordo’s mind at Saturday’s tire-fitting zone, where he suggested Neuville had potentially been pushing too hard considering the championship is at stake.
“I was sad, or mad, because for the championship he was doing really well. And also with Evans, he was taking a lot of points.
“I think he was taking a little bit too much risk.”
Neuville crashed out of the rally on stage eight, dropping valuable championship points
There were knock-on consequences for Neuville’s team-mate after his off. Ott Tänak had been battling Sébastien Ogier for victory but after the Belgian’s crash on Tula, the 2019 world champion indicated his Hyundai team intervened and instructed him not to risk it all to win and bank points instead.
“We’ve been asked to be safe and not pushing,” said Tänak at the end of the first pass of Monte Lerno.
Sordo is up to third after Takamoto Katsuta’s retirement with transmission problems and holds a 25.6s advantage over Evans after SS10.
