As a journalist, I’ve never been particularly fond of the phrase ‘a picture paints 1000 words.’ It’s not exactly the best endorsement of my chosen profession.
But I’m not going to argue that it applies here.
Thierry Neuville, however, gave us the words anyway.
“I mean, I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is at the moment. It’s clearly visible,” the 2024 world champion told DirtFish.
“Let’s say that we… I don’t want to give up. I have said it and it’s true that the motivation is sometimes more and more difficult to keep, of course, because there’s a [lot of] hard work going on, not only from the team but also from the crews and us to make it work.
“And it seems like somehow it went even worse [in Sweden]. At least it didn’t improve. I don’t want to give up. I want to keep fighting and I think we need to take all our courage with both hands and go again and try. I mean, you have to try.”
You can see it in Neuville’s body language that he’s struggling to remain positive. You can hear it in his answers, in his frustrations after stages.
A brief wobble after last year’s Rally Finland aside – where he basically threw the towel in on his title defense only to soften that stance slightly at the next round – the one thing Neuville has always retained is his fighting spirit.
Some have questioned if he’s lost it. He hasn’t – it’s just becoming harder and harder to fight against the problems when the problems aren’t disappearing.
The victory in Saudi Arabia offered a lift, but the performances – and lack of feeling behind the wheel – have suppressed any positive effect.
“Let’s say it’s not getting easier, but I feel like every time when it’s the time to go to the rally, I’m motivated,” said Neuville.
“I say ‘OK, it might not be easy, but let’s do it’. But yeah, once you’re in the car and it doesn’t work, it’s obviously always taking a lot of energy and frustration. The frustration doesn’t help.
“But once you accept the situation, the frustration goes slightly away, and then you can keep working again and try to go in the right direction.”
The last time Neuville failed to get a podium in either Monte or Sweden was 2017 - but he led both those rallies before crashing
A fifth and a seventh from the first two rounds, already trailing the championship leader by more than a maximum-points haul, is form Neuville badly wants, and needs, to arrest. It marks the first time he’s failed to score a podium in either Monte Carlo or Sweden since 2017, but at least that year he led both rallies before making driving mistakes.
But how does Hyundai ensure that fire stays burning within him if his chances of victories appear slim?
“I think it’s difficult,” confessed Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley, “because if we came to this rally thinking that we would be fighting for fourth or fifth, your expectation is to be fighting for fourth or fifth. I quite often say to people, it’s not the disappointment that kills you, it’s the hope.
“And here we had… after the test, it wasn’t amazing but compared to where we were competitive last year, the feeling was: yeah, it’s in the window.
“We’ve had two things here. First of all, Toyota have made a step forward, particularly in how they manage the tires, how they get the traction, how they manage the traction. And secondly, we’ve stayed where we were or potentially lost a bit of feel in the car, lost a bit of feedback in the car. And when you add those together, you get to where we are.
“And the question is, we’re not coming back to Sweden for another 12 months. So we have to make sure we log all that information, but we move forward. We have to make sure we move forward because in a few weeks we’ve got Kenya, and we have to be making sure we’re in the right frame of mind for that.”
