Thierry Neuville, one of the three contenders for the latest driver titles, accepted the invitation of WRC Fanatix and answered some of our questions.
Q: To begin with, what is your goal for 2020?
A: I mean, I have two goals. My personal goal is to win driver’s title and my goal is to defend manufacturer’s title.
Q: And so the expectations for the season, feeling competitive?
A: I am pretty convinced that we will be very competitive. Of course the team follows with the development of the car and with Andrea now as director I don’t see any reason why the team will not do the maximum they can to give us a competitive car to control the season.
Q: Before Rallye Deutschland last year, you competed in Nurburgring with the Hyundai i30 N TCR. What did you take from this participation?
A: Actually I learned definitely some things. First of all, driving on Tarmac ahead of a tarmac event is always good. I was doing some karting and I was able to do a TCR event. I am enjoying it pretty much, different experience for me, but I had a competitive car on me and I was able to learn the playing with techniques from the circuit racing to the rally which is probably especially in Germany Rally when you have long stages and big brakings, I was able to improve a little bit, so that helped me definitely to be competitive and we were really competitive in Germany as well, so I am convinced that the weekend before helped us to be faster.
Q: Did you expect to be such competitive in Germany?
A: I knew that we weren’t gonna be bad for sure. I had already some driving with the car before at Spa and I knew that the times were already pretty quick, but for sure you never know in a real race condition with only some free practice, only few qualifying laps. Actually you have only one lap with those tires and so I had to bring altogether a perfect run that it was for me a pretty new which I don’t have in WRC, I mean to do your qualifying in only one single lap, but we managed it quite well.
Q: Sebastien Loeb and Dani Sordo are the two of the most experienced drivers in WRC. How is it like to work with them and having them as your teammates?
A: I am enjoying working with them obviously, I have worked much more with Dani than Sebastien, but still Sebastien is the search to confirm things, we have pretty clear and straightforward conversations and we also have more or less the same interests and hobbies out of WRC, so it is good to share some experiences, but for sure both are really respective and I also have a lot of respect to them as they had pretty much many career perfect years.
Q: History of WRC has shown that it is difficult to have two teammates who are fighting for the driver’s championship in one team. How do you expect to coexist with Ott?
A: As I said already before, the fight in the stages will be hard, there will be no gifts, but out of the stages we need to cope together, we need to make sure that we will fight for the target of the team and together we probably bring the team strong as ever, so that is very important. Yeah, there will be no gifts for sure, but if we keep a lot of respect to each other, I don’t see any issues.
Q: And overall are you excited to get the season started?
A: Excited to get the season started!
Photo Credits: Hyundai Motorsport
Post a Comment