Really surprised at the lack of pace of Neuville & Hyundai's - slowest of all the WRC's today. They looked so good on the SD video's. Any theories ?
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Really surprised at the lack of pace of Neuville & Hyundai's - slowest of all the WRC's today. They looked so good on the SD video's. Any theories ?
And sadly Paddon is out.
Reading Neuville's quotes he seems to have started with the mindset of not being able to go for the win, and then just settling for top 5 after Ogier went out.
Not the attitude of a champion IMO.
Generally this year Hyundai's strength has been "agility" in slow-medium speed corners and narrow roads and how easy they were to drive in medium-fast corners. They don't seem to have the best top speed. (Ford seems to lead there ahead of Toyota). In Finland the road is so wide that other cars don't have so much issues with controlling the cars (as opposite to Poland which is narrow). This is also why Citroen is doing ok.
Then it's the drivers:
Neuville has never done extremely well in Finland, has bad road position (specially now without Ogier in front) which he is not used to. Also does not want to risk crashing when Ogier is out and relies a bit more on mistakes of the ones in front.
Sordo again has not done well in the later years here.
Paddon was fast (maybe also due to road position), but seems like he was pushing too much (as we have seen at least 2 big moments on vid).
Off course, all this is just speculation. But that's what you asked for ;)