Monaco (AFP)
"It has been a beautiful day": Thierry Neuville's eyes are even more laughing than usual behind his orange-rimmed glasses, after his victory on Sunday - the first-- at the Monte-Carlo rally with the nose and beard of the king of the event, Sébastien Ogier.
At 31, the Belgian driver could not have hoped for a better start to the year. After having failed for the last four years on the 2nd step of the final podium of the championship, he saw arriving in 2020 in his Hyundai stable nothing less than the reigning world champion, the Estonian Ester Ott Tänak, as taciturn as Neuville is talkative .
But here it is: Ott flew into the trees, unharmed but still a little shaken, and Thierry aligned times "scratch" in the last 6 stages of the rally, playing with a few patches of snow, ice and many pebbles.
"It was difficult with a lot of black patches of ice, a lot of humidity, not the same tires on all four wheels, we still had to make sure to be competitive," he says after his victory.
A native of the Ardennes, where humidity and sleet are part of the landscape, he wins his 13th victory in the WRC rally world championship, after that obtained during the last rally of the 2019 championship, in Catalonia at the end of October. However, he remains cautious about his chances of finally winning the world championship.
"Each year, this could be the right one. We are still among the contenders for the championship. After that, it will be tight until the end. at the last rally, it's going to be a fight. " He recalls that the regulations require that the winner of the previous rally open the road to the next, which will be far from facilitating his task in Sweden in mid-February.
- Successful launch -
He underlines how intimidating for drivers is the "Monte", one of the flagship events of the WRC championship. "The first evening, Thursday, it was impressive. The people behind the safety rails setting the mood. I admit that the visibility was almost zero because there were a lot of smoke."
"Friday afternoon, we found better settings, Saturday morning it was even better and then we continued our momentum," he said. A winning streak because he won the last two stages on Saturday and the four races on Sunday, including the two climbs of the legendary Turini Pass.
The icing on the cake, he also won the "power stage" - and his additional points in the championship - with a few thousandths ahead of Ogier, seven-time winner of the Monte.
Thierry Neuville remains realistic about his chances of winning at the start of the season at Tänak, whose championship score is blank after the first rally. "I don't think it will really influence the status. At Hyundai, it has always been equal, same information, same car and I think there will be no strategy in relation to that, in all case not yet now. "
"But it is certain that we got off to a better start than him. (His accident) was impressive. But we are happy that he is doing well and that he can come back to the next rally because we were little worried and we will need him for the constructors' championship, "which Hyundai won in 2019 and intends to defend this year.
© 2020 AFP