Thierry Neuville has admitted that he will need to take more risks if he wants to defeat Sébastien Ogier in a Sunday showdown to win Acropolis Rally Greece.
The 2024 world champion emerged from a tense Saturday duel with a slender 4.1s margin over reigning and nine-time world champion Ogier, ahead of Sunday’s final four rough gravel stages.
Saturday afternoon witnessed the battle between the WRC champions intensify. Neuville delivered arguably his best drive of the season to date to beat Ogier by 7.1s in stage 12, which was shortened due to deteriorating road conditions.
However, Ogier then issued an impressive response on the final stage of the day to beat Neuville by 6.7s to reduce a 10.8s lead to just 4.1s.
Only 84 kilometres of competitive stages remain on Sunday, featuring several rough where the puncture risk will be high. Looking ahead to the final day, Neuville believes he will have to up his speed to beat Ogier, which will require taking more risks.
“It has been a long time since I have been that comfortable in the car so that basically makes the difference,” Neuville told Autosport.com.
“We know on this rough surface the Hyundai usually works better. It was a great drive and it was feeling really nice in the car.
“So far we have been able to control our speed and now with only 84km left we need to raise the speed a bit and take a bit more risk in the rougher sections if we want to win the rally. We have no choice. We (myself and Ogier) both have to go that way. We will see if there is a lucky one or if the fight continues to the very end.”
Given Hyundai and its drivers face a large deficit in the championship standings to Toyota and their drivers, settling for second could be seen as a sensible approach. However in the Hyundai camp the target is clear.
“For the team winning is what we want,” Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley told Autosport.com. “The stages tomorrow will be very difficult and anything can happen.”
Ogier sees no reason to change approach
Having already experienced losing a likely victory to a puncture at Rally Portugal this year which handed Neuville the win, Ogier has maintained a measured risk versus reward approach which has paid off so far.
The nine-time world champion has maintained a focus on himself rather than others, an approach he sees no reason to change ahead of Sunday’s showdown with Neuville.
“My approach is a tendency to be on the safe side as I have lost a lot often with punctures,” Ogier told Autosport.com.
“I really try to stay out of misfortune but let’s see for tomorrow. I don’t want to change anything but with such a close gap we have to try to have a strong result.
“Two thirds of the job is done but tomorrow is still a big day ahead.”
When it comes to reducing risks, Ogier led a call for organisers to shorten stage 12 to eliminate a section of road that he felt would have been too extreme for the revised Hankook hard tyres.
Ogier was quick to praise the FIA and rally organisers for making a swift decision to remove the first 4.5km of the Ghymno test.
“We need to thank the FIA and the organiser for taking the right decision and it was definitely much too extreme and it would have been a disaster with punctures all over the place. I think we can thank them for being clever and making the right choice,” he added.
