Thierry Neuville says that Hyundai has showed a clear plan at Rally Sweden with the team orders and admits that he was not well prepared for this event due to his illness.
The Belgian driver finished in third place overall eventually as he made a mistake in Powerstage resulting in dropping behind his teammate Craig Breen. The Alzenau-based team decided to give team orders and this was the reason why Breen checked one-minute late at the stop control of SS18. His delay meant that he had to take a 10-second time penalty by the stewards and dropped from second to third overall after SS17. His gap from Neuville was at 0,5 seconds before the start of Powerstage, but Breen was not informed about his teammate's spin, therefore he overtook him on the overall classification. Last but not least, it must be mentioned that Neuville did not take part on pre-event test of Hyundai for Rally Sweden as he was sick and he did not recover completely last weekend.
"I think Hyundai showed this weekend the plan and what’s the message", Neuville said.
"But for sure, I think at the end we maybe didn’t handle it as we could have.
"But I’m happy with third place, and Craig deserved very well his second position.
"In general, I think we were not, I was not good enough prepared.
"I should have been better prepared.
"Obviously, I felt sick, it was a difficult start into the rally for me as well not feeling so well, but that’s what it is.
"Once I felt better and road position was better, we did better and we got a good result for the team".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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