Hyundai driver Ogier dug deep on the final stage of the day to beat Ogier by 4.1s and reclaim the lead from his Toyota rival to take a 3.3 second advantage into Sunday’s stages.
A drive that the Belgian called “pure perfection from the beginning to the end” was also enough to earn him a provisional maximum 18 points under the WRC’s new-for-2024 points structure.
Drivers that reach the finish will be awarded points based on three different metrics this year; their positions at the end of Saturday’s stages, the fastest drivers across Sunday’s stages, and the quickest drivers through the Power Stage as before.
“I was enjoying it because I felt comfortable in the car,” Neuville told Motorsport.com.
“It’s never nice to see [Ogier] go faster than us, but on the last stage I just had the feeling like I can do a good time there.
“I was faster than him also in the morning loop so we decided to go for it and we had the perfect stage, it was brilliant.”
Asked if he had been thinking about the points, or simply about beating Ogier, Neuville replied: “A bit of both!”
Explaining his approach to Sunday, Neuville said he will play a strategic game.
“We have only 3.3s advantage so we need to drive fast,” the 2020 Monte Carlo winner reflected.
Photo by: Romain Thuillier / Hyundai Motorsport
Thierry Neuville, Hyundai World Rally Team
“We can’t risk everything, so we need to be clever tomorrow and see how many points we get.
“We don’t need all the points, but if we can keep first place and take a maximum of points we can get tomorrow by being consistent and fast, it should be okay.”
Hyundai boss Cyril Abiteboul told Motorsport.com that Neuville’s performance had been one of the best since he took over as team principal last year, and paid tribute to both the Belgian and his co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe for “an absolutely remarkable performance”.
“It’s very controlled, again it’s no coincidence, he was already fast this morning in that stage,” said Abiteboul.
“It was very collected and focused and he drove extremely well in that stage.
“I think there is a bit maybe also of tyre strategy; we elected to go for two spares which on the face of it when you are so tight in gaps could be a disadvantage because we know that it’s a handicap of something like six to seven seconds in this afternoon loop.
“When you have very small gaps like that, you think that maybe it’s not the right thing to do but maybe we had a bit more juice towards the end of…
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