Winning the World Rally Championship is the pinnacle of any rally driver’s career, but fairly soon attention turns to the next challenge: retaining that crown the following season.
Welcome to Thierry Neuville’s world. The Hyundai star has done the hard bit by, in his case, finally becoming world champion in 2024, but now he has the arguably even harder task ahead of him of defending that number one status.
Several drivers have done that successfully, but history is equally filled with examples of drivers who, for one reason or another, haven’t made the best job of remaining the reigning champion.
In this week’s episode of SPIN, The Rally Pod, Luke Barry and Alasdair Lindsay get together to discuss those cases and examine the worst title defenses in the WRC history. And in doing so, they stumble upon a common theory when answering what actually contributed to these so-called ‘worst’ campaigns as world champions.
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