Thierry Neuville has been with Hyundai Motorsport since the beginning of its i20 journey in 2014. The 32-year-old has picked his top-five moments from this journey
5 Rally Argentina, 2017
There were so many good moments to chose from. Of course we had some challenging moments as well, but winning against Elfyn [Evans] in Argentina in 2017 was one of the big moments for me. To compete on the roads like we were, the final stage was El Condor, you had to be really precise, but also really fast. The competition was so tight, so close – we were 0.6s behind Elfyn going into the stage, but we managed to beat him and win by 0.7s. Incredible!
4 Rally Guanajuato México, 2014
We had made Hyundai’s first podium with the i20 and we had to drive back to León for service. There was a problem with a leak in radiator and the engine temperature was going up. We were given these really big bottles of beer from a sponsor at the end of the event. I hadn’t sprayed it, I wanted to bring it for the team. It’s a good job – we needed it on the road section. We stopped the leak in the radiator, but we had nothing to replace the water which we’d lost. So we used the beer!
3 ADAC Rallye Deutschland, 2014
The first win in the World Rally Championship will always be a result that a driver remembers and that is certainly right for me. This rally was not so straightforward after I rolled in the shakedown. To come back and make the first ever win a few days later was really special.
2 Rallye Monte-Carlo, 2020
I’ve been close to winning in Monte-Carlo a few times. When we came with the new cars [in 2017] we had good speed and last year it was really, really close and I lost only by a couple of seconds. This year, we were stronger and I made the final day even better and I was able to take the win. As you can expect for Monte, it was not always straightforward: we had some work to do on the final morning when we were leaving Monaco from the tyre-fitting zone, so it was quite stressful. But in the end we had the speed in the final stage to win and to win in a rally like Monte-Carlo is a really good moment.
1 Rally Italia-Sardegna, 2018
We had some rain on the first day of this rally, so there was no disadvantage for me running first on the road – at least on the first pass, the second pass was still quite complicated. But [Sébastien] Ogier was right behind me on the road, so we were in similar conditions. We were always close through this event, but it was such an intense fight on the final day. But it wasn’t just this fight, there was also the question of the timecard (Ogier’s co-driver Julien Ingrassia had left his timecard at a control – the timecard was then brought to him by Ott Tänak) and a lot of stress wondering if he would be disqualified. In the end, we just had to focus on beating him and we did that. It was a big fight and we had a two-wheel moment at a slow left corner. But it was enough. We won. By seven-tenths of a second. ผลบอล7m สด
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