It was an innocuous-enough looking left-hander that took you over a bridge from Germany to Austria. On Sunday morning, that border crossing became a symbol of Thierry Neuville’s season.
Sitting seventh and 2m30s off the lead, the Belgian’s hopes of winning this rally had long since sailed. Lying 58 points off the top of the table, his hopes of a successful defense of his World Rally Championship title had – effectively – followed.
There really wasn’t so much to push for on stage 15, but here we were watching his broken Hyundai i20 N Rally1 being lifted onto the back of a tow truck.
Neuville smiled the thinnest of smiles. Just.
“We’re OK,” he told DirtFish. “Just about.
“I think the note was too fast. I understeered and the corner was turning more than I expected.”
The corner in question was a long left, tracing the hedge of a river-side house in what some might say was the rather aptly named village of Fuchsödt. The constant-radius corner led the road onto the bridge over the River Osterbach, into Austria and to an immediate square-right.
As Neuville admitted, the speed was too much and he was never going to make it onto the bridge. There were no skid marks on the road, indicating he hadn’t had time to jump on the brakes with any kind of force. While it was cold, with temperatures hovering around four degrees at the scene, there was no hint of black ice in the road.
Thankfully, the tighter right-hander which followed would have reduced the speed and the force of impact between the i20 and the enormous straw bale which protected the railings of the bridge.
On impact, the bale was hoofed into the river and the rear of the Hyundai took to the air as physics did its thing. The front of the car suffered significant damage, but the crew were both out of the car quickly, with Martijn Wydaeghe holding up the ‘OK’ board to the helicopter.
It wouldn’t have been long afterwards that Wydaeghe started to feel back pain. The intervention crew were deployed with ambulances soon following. A medical helicopter landed on the scene and took the world champion co-driver to hospital for more – what DirtFish understands to be – precautionary checks.
Neuville departed the scene by road, heading back to service in Passau.
With the stage cancelled and emergency teams out of the way, the stage commander immediately began to work towards the second running of the stage. Farm machinery was brough in to try to repair the bridge railings, but when that wasn’t possible concrete blocks were inserted in front of the bridge at the point of Neuville’s impact. A replacement bale was also put in place, with attention then turning to fishing the one which saved Neuville and Wydaeghe from potentially more significant injury from the river.
In a social media post, Neuville confirmed both he and Wydaeghe underwent “several checks at the hospital and although we’re both feeling quite sore after the impact, we’re doing fine”.
