WRC
How can Thierry Neuville be crowned world champion in Chile?
© Nikos Katikis / DPPI
The 2024 season of WRC begins its final sprint at Rally from Chile, eleventh and penultimate round of the championship. In South America, the leader of the Drivers' standings Thierry Neuville mathematically has a first match point to seize his first world title. The driver Hyundai, winner of the last meeting in Greece, could take the crown on Sunday, at the finish of the Chilean event... but for that to happen, exceptional conditions would be needed.
Before the start of the Rally Chile, there are still five people mathematically in the running for the title of world champion: Thierry Neuville, Ott Tänak (34 points behind), Sébastien Ogier (38 points behind), Elfyn Evans (52 points behind) and Adrien fourmaux (62 points behind). For the Belgian to be crowned champion at the end of the South American round, he must have a 61-point lead, the equivalent of two "perfect" victories (30 points per weekend and one point to avoid a tie) before the last two meetings of the season, in Central Europe and Japan.
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Obviously, the new points scale makes reading and forecasting for the championship very difficult, if not impossible (or at least, far too long to be understandable!). To sum up, in Chile, this means that Thierry Neuville must score 27 points more than Ott Tänak, 23 more than Sébastien Ogier, 9 more than Elfyn Evans and that he must not lose a single point to Adrien Fourmaux. Suffice to say that it would take an exceptional alignment of the planets for this scenario to happen!
The Hyundai driver does, however, have the opportunity to realistically eliminate two candidates from the title race, namely Adrien Fourmaux and Elfyn Evans. As for Ott Tänak and Sébastien Ogier, we will probably have to wait until at least the Central Europe Rally (17-20 October) to have a real chance of the title for Thierry Neuville.
WRC
General classification before the Rally of Chile
1) Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) – 192 points (2 wins)
2) Ott Tänak (Hyundai) – 158 points (1 victory)
3) Sébastien Ogier (Toyota) – 154 points (3 wins)
4) Elfyn Evans (Toyota) – 140 points
5) Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford) – 130 points
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Dorian Grangier
A young journalist nostalgic for the motorsport of yesteryear. Raised on the exploits of Sébastien Loeb and Fernando Alonso.
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Yves-Henri RANDIER
25/09/2024 at 10:13 a.m.
Let's hope that the 2024 scale will be abandoned in 2025 to give better readability of the ranking and stop rewarding on Sundays. Old fool, I admit it but it was better before!!
Malo
25/09/2024 at 04:54 a.m.
5th as usual, we wait for the others to have problems and that will happen.