FIA European Rally Championship leader Alexey Lukyanuk admits his thirst for perfection makes it harder for him to control his frustration during the heat of battle.

Lukyanuk was furious after discovering he’d been handed a five-minute penalty for an early check-in prior to stage six, which wrecked his hopes of Rally Hungary victory in an instant and has also harmed his bid to win the ERC title for a second time in his Saintéloc Junior Team Citroën C3 R5.

“I need to take some anger management because sometimes I go mad when things go wrong,” the Russian said. “I am upset with my reaction to that. I need to be smoother on people and smoother on situations. I cannot control everything but I want to. I am a perfectionist and even small things make me mad. In future I will work on that.”

Of his strategy for Rally Hungary’s second leg and his title chances, Pirelli-equipped Lukyanuk explained: “I’m trying to focus on positive things. In terms of rally [what happened yesterday] it’s absolutely not the way it should be. I don’t want to get any pleasure from problems from others but for the championship Oliver’s problems with tyres played in our hands. It would be much more stressful should he be somewhere in the top three.

“I know he will build some places today but for the championship it’s not so bad as I thought in the beginning. All my emotions calmed down because it’s not possible to maintain a high level of thrills inside so I become a bit empty and slept well. We need to finish the job. We have tough stages today so we need to focus on that and that’s it.”

https://www.fiaerc.com/perfectionist...er-management/