Thierry Neuville said he “would like to go faster, but I feel like the car can’t handle it” after Rally Turkey’s Saturday morning loop, which he ended just 1.6 seconds behind leader Sébastien Ogier.
Hyundai driver Neuville led the rally after Friday’s first stage, but time lost in dust clouds on the evening run through Gökçe meant he conceded first place to returning team-mate Sébastien Loeb.
A change to the gaps between cars entering stages has alleviated Neuville’s concerns about that dust, but he has still not been able to reclaim the rally lead from Toyota’s Ogier despite ending Saturday morning with victory on SS5.
“It was a great fight to be honest,” Neuville told DirtFish.
“A very long stage to start with, and to be honest I was happy to finish the stage for the first time without any trouble before getting to the finish.
“A very positive morning, but I was struggling a bit with the handling of the car, more than the performance itself.
“I wasn’t able to get it 100% right, but hopefully we can improve for this afternoon.”
Neuville was initially the ninth car to enter the roads – he is now eighth after team-mate Ott Tänak retired – and that has proven especially beneficial now the hazardous dust clouds have been minimised.
While he has made use of that advantage better than Loeb, who is now 20.1s behind Neuville, he said he has not been able to consistently match eighth on the road Ogier due to the performance of his i20 Coupe WRC.
“Basically in the morning stages it felt quite OK, except the very rough parts,” said Neuville. “We are missing some performance in there.
“I would like to go faster, but I feel like the car can’t handle it, so we need to improve in those sections. Which were only a few this morning, but might be all over the place this afternoon.
“That’s why I want to improve, and I did a couple of changes for the last stage. The speed was there, but the handling wasn’t great.
“I was able to set a couple of markers for the team to check in the data where we have to improve. They have enough time now to work on it.”
Those changes will include suspension tweaks and an increase in ride-height, but Neuville said it is unlikely he will “go that far” on changes to the dampers.
Despite Tänak retiring on SS3 with a steering issue, Neuville said he has “no concern” about any technical problems striking his, and after two years of having his own hopes of victory ended on the same Yeşilbelde stage he has his ‘fingers crossed that we get a trouble-free run’.
