Thierry Neuville has revealed a setup misstep caused the mistake that cost him second place – as well as some powerstage points – on Rally Sweden’s final stage.
Hyundai’s imposition of team orders was one of the talking points of the event.
Ahead of the Umeå powerstage, Craig Breen was asked to clock in late, earn himself a 10-second penalty and thereby allow lead driver Neuville to finish second instead of third and claim three valuable extra points towards his World Rally Championship title tilt.
It was only Neuville’s strong run through the penultimate stage, a re-run of the morning’s opener at Västervik, that gave just enough breathing space over Kalle Rovanperä for the team to make the switch.
“I knew that we had to make a break over there and I knew on the second pass we were mainly stronger than the Toyotas,” Neuville explained to DirtFish.
“Whereas we were struggling on the first pass of stages. We were able to make it work, and I had a seven-second lead ahead of Kalle heading into the last stage.”
But it didn’t quite work out. With only that seven-second buffer – and powerstage points on the line – neither Hyundai driver could afford to totally back off on the final stage.
Unbeknown to Breen, a mistake from Neuville meant he dropped 1.3s to his team-mate, enough to reverse their positions once more. And now they didn’t have the buffer to Rovanperä for Breen to take another penalty (10s the smallest available for checking in to a control one minute late).
But what caused Neuville to run wide and lose time in a snowbank?
“I made a small mistake,” Neuville admitted. “The gap was small with Craig, so I tried to do well, but the feeling wasn’t the same as in the previous stage.
“I softened probably too much the car, and I struggled with the feeling.
“We lost our second position, but anyhow the target was to stay ahead of Kalle. I would have loved a bit more points in the powerstage as well, but all in all we have done a decent weekend.”
Neuville is third in the championship heading to Rally México, nine points behind championship leader Ott Tänak and six adrift of Rovanperä.
