The World Rally Championship should do more to sell its positive stories rather than getting hung up on negatives.
That’s the view of Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul after his team again bounced back from a difficult opening day to bag the biggest haul of Sunday points on last weekend’s Rally Latvia.
First and third on the road through Friday’s stages, Hyundai’s championship challengers Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak were only ninth and sixth, respectively, on the leaderboard after the opening leg.
But Tänak climbed back up to fourth by the end of Saturday and finished the rally on the podium, despite an incident with a collapsed promotional arch blocking his route. More significantly, Tänak also scored the maximum 12 points on Sunday, and Neuville pocketed six – trebling his score from the opening two legs – despite still having an unfavorable position of third on the road.
Tänak has scored at least 10 Sunday points on six consecutive WRC rounds
It meant Tänak leapfrogged Elfyn Evans to second in the drivers’ championship, just eight points down on his team-mate. Meanwhile, Hyundai still leads the manufacturers’ standings, albeit by a margin of only one point over Toyota.
In that sense Hyundai’s weekend could be seen as a negative, but Abiteboul thinks it instead highlights the unwavering determination of his squad.
“One thing that we need to do better as a sport, we need to limit the negativities that there is around the world,” Abiteboul told DirtFish.
“It’s very difficult because I don’t know how we can spin positively when there is so much hard work, effort, preparation, investment going on and indeed that you are limited. But I would like to turn that, now that this is behind us, into a positive.
“I mean, despite the adverse conditions, despite 10 drivers’ titles that Toyota was lining up with four cars, despite an arch falling over Ott, he progressed in the championship. We are one and two in the drivers’ championship, and we are still leading in the teams’ championship.
“So I think we should be positive and put the negatives behind us, and see simply that even under adverse conditions, we have this no-surrender attitude, which I’m very proud of, and I want to be positive about that.”
Having been vocal with his frustrations earlier in the event, Neuville cast a similarly upbeat tone after his damage-limitation exercise on Sunday that meant he dropped only two points to Evans overall.
Neuville told DirtFish: “Today obviously we took a lot of risks and tried to push as hard as we could – and I think we did quite well.
“So we’re happy with the drive. But generally not much more to add to everything that has been said.
“I just wanted to thank the team, to be so resilient and patient all weekend and for supporting us in the struggle. So that was very helpful.”
