Thierry Neuville labels WRC struggles the “hardest time of my career”

Rebecca French

3 months ago

Thierry Neuville has described his current World Rally Championship struggles as “the toughest moment of his career so far” after a difficult morning at Rally Sweden.

The 2024 champion has struggled to find confidence behind the wheel of the Hyundai i20 N Rally 1 car this season and his struggles at the opening round in Monte Carlo last month will continue in Sweden.

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Even after Thursday’s test, the Belgian reiterated that he felt “missing some confidence” and even said on Friday that the current period was the most difficult of his career so far.

Neuville ended the morning session in seventh place, 1 minute 37.4 seconds behind rally leader Toyota’s Elfyn Evans. Neuville’s car balance issues were further exacerbated when he hit a snowdrift on stage three and lost more than a minute of time.

“Overall, it was OK, but I had a really hard time keeping my balance,” Neuville said at the end of the fourth period.

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“It’s disturbing to be honest, it’s not surprising, it makes it very challenging. We’ve lost some time now but the rebound is still long, so we’ll keep working on it and we’ll see.”

Thierry Neuville, Hyundai i20 N Rally1

Asked about the direction the team could take heading into the midday service, he added: “It’s tough. It’s honestly the most difficult period of my career so far. We’ve changed a lot of things so you could say we’re a bit lost as well, but that doesn’t help.”

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Speaking in the media box about his current situation, Neuville elaborated further, adding: “To be honest, I wouldn’t say I’m happy. We’re going to make some changes this afternoon but it’s hard to know where to go and what to do, but if we don’t try, we’re not going to learn anything. I think we have to make some changes and see where it goes.”

Neuville’s Hyundai teammates Adrian Fulmer and Esapekka Lappi also struggled to find the pace to compete with the Toyota. Fulmer was forced to make extreme set-up changes after the second period in an attempt to find a solution.

“I had some understeer issues in the first corner [in stage two] But I didn’t think I’d say the difference was that big,” he said. “I decided to go to extremes with the setup to make the car work better.

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“It was a little harder to drive, but it seemed faster in the end. It wasn’t the pace I wanted, but it was an improvement, so maybe we can build something from there.”