Originally Posted by
Sergiow
Thierry Neuville 9/10
Safari Rally Kenya result: 5th
Here’s an incredible stat: Neuville scored only five points fewer than Rovanperä in Kenya. Their rallies couldn’t have been more different – one running smoothly, quickly and with consistency; the other wrestling a car that refused to work properly and eventually ended up getting planted into a tree.
Neuville keeps having rallies this year that, on paper, look like absolute train wrecks – and yet he somehow salvages something out of it and maintains his second place in the championship.
It was a familiar script for the five-time championship runner-up on Friday. An air filter problem left him down on both power and patience – not that he had much coming into the Safari Rally, given Hyundai’s reliability record.
Then came a sequence of mad events late on Saturday. His alternator failed; he repaired it. His car stalled twice on Sleeping Warrior; he got it going again. But he didn’t get very far, smacking the i20 N Rally1 nose-first into a tree.
It didn’t even matter in the grand scheme of things. He’d lost so much time with the stalling issue that the podium was already long gone before that tree came into view. At that exact moment, there was no point being careful – getting a 10-minute super rally penalty was hardly going to be worse than the stoppages he’d already faced.
It’s clear that Neuville is pretty much in the form of his life right now – but yet again his own car was the biggest obstacle to success.