Thierry Neuville is happy that he still leads the championship believes that his drive and his performance have been well rewarded for the first two days of Croatia Rally despite the fact that he lost his chance to win the fourth WRC round.
The Belgian driver dropped from first to third overall at the end of Stage 18 where he clipped a branch after a jump and had to continue without the rear wing for the rest of Sunday. In addition to that, he said at the end of Stage 19 that he had no hybrid power and this was the reason why he did not score any extra point in Powerstage. He lost his lead twice from Elfyn Evans on the first two days of the rally when he suffered from a puncture in Stage 7 and when he followed a different tyre strategy that did not pay off in Stage 13. Totally, Neuville scored 19 points (18 points from Saturday and one point from SuperSunday classification) and remains the championship leader as Evans took also 19 points in Croatia, thus their gap is still at six points before the start of Rally Portugal.
"While we didn’t finish how we would have wanted, we have been well rewarded for our great drive on Friday and Saturday", Neuville said.
"Those are important points and despite not scoring many yesterday, we were still the third-best performers - equal with Elfyn - and we only lost one point to Ott.
"SS18 was really tricky, and I tried my best to avoid an impact immediately hitting the brakes but there was nothing I could do.
"I am happy to still be in the lead and to retain the advantage, however Portugal is going to be tough for us from our road position".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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