Thierry Neuville has explained his two off-track excursions that cost the World Rally Championship title favourite the lead at the Central European Rally.
The Hyundai driver started Saturday with a 6.4s lead over Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier before two spins on stage 11 dropped him to fourth, behind rivals Ogier, Ott Tanak and Elfyn Evans, 33.6s in arrears.
The two errors could impact the WRC title fight with championship leader Neuville needing to outscore Tanak by two points to seal a maiden crown this weekend.
Neuville first’s spin arrived when his i20 N touched the grass, pitching the car into a 360-degree spin. After recovering from that moment, he then ran wide at a left-hander and onto the grass, losing even more time when his car briefly became trapped in a ditch.
The Belgian admitted conditions were much trickier than expected as morning fog had made the road much more slippery.
Neuville wasn’t the only driver caught out, as M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux, Gregoire Munster and Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta endured adventures onto the grass.
“It was two spins I mean the first one was a basic spin and the second one the pacenote was too fast,” Neuville told Motorsport.com.
“It was a long corner and you don’t see the exit very well because it is uphill and when I entered the corner, it turned more than my pacenotes told me. I tried to save it [the car] and getting out of the ditch we got stuck a little bit and we lost time.
“Obviously it was going well but there were tricky conditions out there and there were lots of surprises.
“The first stage was a real surprise I didn’t expect such conditions so it was much more tricky than expected and then we had two little mistakes. We are still here and the rally is not over.”
Neuville admitted that his weekend plan has now changed given the deficit to the lead group. As it stands, he will score 10 Saturday points five fewer than Tanak ahead of Super Sunday, where 12 points are on offer.
“We can’t catch anybody anymore so now we have to get through the afternoon secure some points and look forward to tomorrow,” he added.
New rally leader Ogier was among the few to avoid an off-road excursion across the morning’s three stages, although the eight-time world champion admitted the conditions were difficult to judge.
“It has been a challenging morning. We also had a little moment,” said Ogier.
“It surprisingly started very dry with quite good grip and, of course, you attack and have confidence and then you approach the sections where there is a bit more humidity and it was easy to make mistakes.
“I think many drivers went off the road and into the field. We are happy we managed ok and could get back in the lead.”
