In the championship fight, Neuville is pulling away, and after the opening day, the Belgian is in third place at the legendary Acropolis Rally. Ahead of him are his teammates Ott Tänak and Dani Sordo. Tänak still has a theoretical chance for the championship, but even if the Estonian wins, the gap will not close significantly if Neuville performs well on Sunday.
Hyundai already has the opportunity on Saturday evening to position Sordo behind Neuville, provided there are no issues. Once again, on Friday in Greece, Neuville demonstrated his smart approach, avoiding a forced push for victory.
“There was no option for us to to fight for the lead. I would have needed to take too much risk in the position we are. There’s no need.,” Neuville says.
“It was a clever approach. We saw already from the beginning that people got trouble, and we knew it would be a long day and especially a long rally. So nothing is done yet and that’s why we need to keep that approach for the upcoming day.”
Neuville predicts an even tougher day on Saturday. There will be no service breaks, and in addition to the six special stages, there will be a significant number of road sections to cover.
“It is very early in the rally and tomorrow is a challenging day. If we imagined that today it would have been without service as well, probably there would be only two cars in the finish and the other would have would all retired. Tomorrow is a challenging day and we need to get it to the end.”
In Greece, it has been extremely hot, with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees Celsius. The heat has certainly been tough on Neuville. Rally cars have no air conditioning, so cabin temperatures have reached sauna-like levels.
“We have been fighting out there in tough conditions and very hot weather. It wasn’t a trouble free run for us, but we have been consistent. We had some technical issues this morning, which obviously can happen but the guys solved it and we didn’t lose too much time,” Neuville tells.
“It’s super hot in the car and I was struggling a bit with the concentration at the end of the stages because it was just too hot.”
