While the rest of the World Rally Championship takes a week out of competition this weekend, Thierry Neuville will enter the Tampereen Lattiamestarit Rally ahead of Rally Finland.
The Saturday July 25 event, based near Tampere around 100 miles from Jyväsyklä, will provide the Hyundai driver 30 miles of stages to further test ahead of next week’s WRC counter.
“We need more grip on first pass conditions,” Neuville, who finished at last weekend’s Rally Estonia, told DirtFish.
“I need more trust and to have more consistent balance as well on the first pass. Second pass is fine.”
Neuville struggled in the ruts during Rally Estonia, but that shouldn’t be a problem next week.
“On a first pass condition there are no ruts, and in Finland they are very rare as well,” he explained. “So yeah I mean the grip should be higher in general, but I feel like we need to do a good job this weekend to find something to improve the car.”
Neuville will search for further improvements to his i20 N Rally1 in rally conditions
Team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, who beat Neuville to third place last weekend by 5.9 seconds, won’t get the benefit of the test event. But he’s not too concerned.
“I will learn maybe a little bit from his setup that I will try maybe on a shakedown, but I don’t think it will remake completely the car,” Fourmaux told DirtFish.
“It’s a very short rally, so that’s OK.”
The Hyundai pairing are currently tied on 111 points in the championship, 66 points down on series leader Elfyn Evans.
Hyundai hasn’t won Rally Finland since 2022 when Ott Tänak defeated Kalle Rovanperä in a superb drive.
Rally Finland begins with shakedown and the opening Harju stage on Thursday July 30.
