On the morning loop’s second special stage, Neuville’s car suffered a tyre blowout. The damaged tire caused significant damage to the rear end of the car, forcing the Belgian Hyundai stars to undertake some unusual measures during the liaison before the last stage of the loop.
Neuville and Wydaeghe managed to complete the over 30-kilometer-long Kedong special stage honourably, even though they had to wear large goggles inside the cockpit due to the dust that had infiltrated.
“We got hit by a puncture, it was very unexpected. Obviously, we lost some time with that puncture, I would say about 6 or 7 seconds.”
“After that, we had just a lot of dust in the car, so we needed to do a bit of MacGyver, try to somehow sort it out and to survive in the dust. But at the end, it wasn’t as bad as expected, and we got through,” said Neuville.
Neuville is currently sixth in the rally, 48 seconds behind the leader, Kalle Rovanperä. The gap has not become too large, as the challenging Safari Rally is just getting started.
“Let’s see how the afternoon is going to be. It was a little bit rough out there, and it could be even rougher this afternoon. But also, let’s see if there’s some rain incoming. It can spice it all up a bit,” Neuville shared.
Neuville’s teammate Ott Tänak is in third place after four special stages, trailing only two Finns, Toyota’s Kalle Rovanperä and Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi.
Tänak is 16.8 seconds behind the leading Rovanperä.
“We had a good loop, actually. No drama at all. Was not maybe just perfect with the car to get a good feeling. But other than that, we had a really clean run. No trouble at all, which is obviously most important,” said Tänak.
“The target was to have a clean loop without drama and just to have a good start to the rally.”
