After a difficult Friday marred by technical issues with his car, Neuville entered Saturday in a challenging position. The championship leader managed an impressive recovery, climbing from 15th to seventh place.
This climb earned Neuville four provisional championship points, meaning he now needs at least two more points on Sunday to secure his first WRC title ahead of teammate Ott Tänak, who leads Rally Japan.
“I’m not sure we can be 100% happy with the result overnight, but we need to be satisfied with the performance of the day and being able to catch back seventh position, which obviously didn’t seem very realistic this morning, but somehow we had a good pace,” Neuville explained.
“We were third best performer at one tenth to Tänak. We must be happy with that. I look forward to tomorrow. Obviously tomorrow could be a big day, so we cross fingers and try to have a good sleep.”
Despite Friday’s major setback, Neuville insisted he wasn’t feeling too much pressure.
“It wasn’t that easy, to be honest. But I have had enough setbacks throughout my career, so I learned to stay calm and just to deal with it. The best thing you can do in that situation is to fight back,” Neuville said.
“I think we’ve done that in a proper way today. Considering also that today, obviously we were the only one who had a lot to lose compared to all the others who have a lot to win. We had to manage our risks and we still had a good pace. I’m satisfied with that. Obviously it could have been a much better weekend.”
While Neuville doesn’t need any heroic efforts on Sunday, he still needs to bring the car home in a decent position to secure the championship.
“At the moment we’re still within a fight and we still need to catch some points, so I’m not thinking too much about it. I’m sure after a few stages tomorrow, we will see a bit more clear where we are and what we have to do to finish the rally,” Neuville remarked.
“It would be nice if we do not have any additional pressure for the Power Stage but let’s see.”
