Thierry Neuville is embroiled in a tantalisingly close fight for victory after another dramatic and exciting day at Rally Poland, the eighth round of the 2017 FIA World Rally Championship.
Neuville has marginally extended his overall lead of the rally to 3.1 seconds from M-Sport’s Ott Tanak, with 25.5 seconds separating the Belgian from his Kiwi team-mate Hayden Paddon, who has moved up to third.
Saturday’s itinerary took in a loop of four stages, run once in the morning and again in the afternoon. The day culminated, as on Friday, with a Super Special at the Mikolajki Arena.
Neuville relinquished control of the rally midway through the opening loop. He fought back with a stage win in SS14 (Kruklanki) to end the morning with a narrow 1.3-second advantage. Paddon also picked up a stage win in the morning loop before adding two more in the afternoon. Drama for Jari-Matti Latvala saw the Kiwi move up to third after SS16 (Pozezdrze) as Neuville and Tanak hit trouble.
Neuville dropped 15 seconds of time with a rear-left puncture, which caused bodywork damage, leaving him with work to do. As Tanak battled his own problems, the Belgian crew claimed second in SS17 (Goldap) and first in SS18 (Kruklanki) to regain the outright lead, which they extended to 3.1 seconds after the evening’s Super Special.
SS18 “We had a lot of rain & I struggled a lot. I was pushing very hard. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”#RallyPoland #HMSGOfficial #WRC
— Thierry Neuville (@thierryneuville) July 1, 2017
“It has been a pretty intense day, one way or another”, Neuville commented
“We had a solid morning loop and it was developing into a fun, close battle at the front. We lost the lead in the first stages but gained it back with a big push in SS14 (Kruklanki). It was almost a pointless loop because we held the same lead at the end as we did at the start! We were determined not to give up, so we pushed hard when we could and started the afternoon with a stage win.”
“Unfortunately, we then picked up a rear-left puncture that cost us a lot of seconds in SS16 (Pozezdrze). Ott was also suffering from his own issues, so we had to use that opportunity to make up the lost time. In the penultimate stage, it started to rain a lot on our run and we struggled, we were really unlucky. Thankfully, we still set the fastest time and retook the lead. We don’t have a huge time advantage so we won’t be able to take it easy on Sunday. The win is still very much open and I am sure Ott will be hunting us down.”
O/A Classification after Day 2 @rajdpolski. #WRC #HyundaiWRC pic.twitter.com/jLONZTPMdl
— Hyundai Motorsport (@HMSGOfficial) July 1, 2017
