Thierry Neuville admits that he was worried of his car's transmission issues on Friday afternoon saying that the last stage was too stressful for him, but he is being happy with his tyre strategy today.
The Belgian driver stormed into Acropolis Rally lead after the end of Stage 2 and managed to keep his first place despite the problems he faced on Friday afternoon. He was able to increase his gap from the second Sebastien Ogier at the end of Stage 5 as TN chose to put four soft tyres which gave him an advantage due to the fact that the stage conditions became drier. However, Ogier set the fastest time in Stage 6 and took 4,6 seconds off Neuville's lead with their gap being at 2,8 seconds before the start of Saturday as the last one suffered from transmission issues in addition to a broken rear diff.
"That last stage was stressful; not only was it a challenging one at 28km, but from the very start I could hear a noise coming from the rear differential", Neuville said.
"I was having a problem with the transmission on previous stages but just on the start line until SS6 Elatia.
"I couldn’t go full throttle for the first three gears, which was costing me a lot of time.
"I was a bit worried we wouldn’t make it to the end; thankfully we did.
"The difficult part now for us is to make our tyre choice tomorrow – we have no opportunity to react in the morning, so we need to make that decision tonight.
"I’m convinced we made the right call today to be fastest; whether it was a good choice to help us win the rally, we will only know at the end of the weekend".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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