World Rally champion Thierry Neuville has explained how he managed to go off on the exact same corner twice at the opening round of 2025, the Monte Carlo Rally.
Neuville had been leading the rally after Thursday’s trio of stages, but slipped backwards as he faced the worst of the ice on Friday morning.
He then lost over two minutes with an off at a right-hand downhill hairpin on the morning’s final stage – an excursion which damaged the rear-left wheel and suspension on the champion’s i20.
Incredibly, Neuville then went off at the very same corner in the afternoon loop – this time because of a puncture.
“Yeah, a day to forget, clearly,” Neuville told DirtFish.
“Difficult morning. Obviously first stage being first on the road wasn’t a real advantage, losing a lot of time. Second stage cancelled. Third run, I made a mistake – I misjudged the grip with the new tires on the dry Tarmac and, yeah, obviously very lucky to get to get away with it and bring back the car.
Neuville had to drag his car through the remainder of the first pass of SS6
“What we didn’t know is that it was the recce run for the afternoon loop obviously,” Neuville laughed. “Yeah, punctured like 3km into the stage.
“We were hesitating a lot to change [the wheel or] not to change, and at the end we decided to carry on. But suddenly the tire went at the same place as this morning, we went straight, we lost 20 seconds.
“But overall, yeah, I mean we were basically two minutes and two minutes: it’s four minutes lost on one single day. It’s a lot to catch back.”
Asked if the tire deteriorated at the fateful hairpin and that’s what caused him to go off there specifically, Neuville added: “No, no, no, it was punctured, I don’t know, three kilometers before.
“So we did a lot of kilometers already on the puncture. It felt quite good, to be honest, on the first few kilometers but on that specific braking the tire gave up and it started spinning on the rim so we just went straight.”
Overall, Neuville described his day as “challenging”, irrespective of his two offs.
He explained: “Obviously, we had some advantage in some sections [with road position but] we had a bit of disadvantage in the last section of the last stage. But overall, I felt quite OK.
“This morning, we saw that the road was improving. I mean first split was at 2km, we lost already seven seconds on 2km to a Rally2 car [Oliver Solberg] which made the fourth fastest time overall.
“So there was nothing we could do. We were three seconds slower than Elfyn so I was reasonably happy with my time. But, yeah, challenging morning after that was basically a rally to forget.”
Neuville is still within the points-paying positions in ninth, and just 25.7 seconds adrift of Sami Pajari’s Toyota.
However, his main focus is now on the final day of the rally where up to 10 championship points are available from Super Sunday and the powerstage.
“Yeah, I mean tomorrow we maybe can catch back one or two positions maximum and then the Sunday will be important,” Neuville said.