Thierry Neuville: “Continue this momentum”

Après une rude bagarre avec la Ford Fiesta – M-Sport byOtt Tänak, Thierry Neuville finally concluded as a winner in Rally from Poland, the Estonian having crashed in SS21 by making a mistake and being forced to retire.

Un duel qui aura animé presque de bout en bout la deuxième partie de l’épreuve estivale, Jari-Matti Latvala (Toyota), longtemps troisième dans le sillage de Neuville et Tänak, ayant renoncé hier après-midi. « It was a very close battle this weekend, comments the winner. As seems to have been the case in recent rallies.

It was clearly a relief to regain the lead after Ott's retirement this morning, as it allowed us to breathe in the final stages. We were able to approach the end of the race more easily and relax, not too much, but enough to finish the rally calmly and obtain this great result. »

11 points gap before Finland

With this third success of the year after his two consecutive victories in Corsica on asphalt and in Argentina on gravel, Neuville further reduced the gap in the championship against the leader Sébastien Ogier (Ford), 3rd in Poland, after taking advantage of the setbacks of Tänak and Latvala to move up the rankings. An event marked by some bad luck for the Frenchman with two punctures on Saturday.

“Our goal for the weekend was to score more points than Séb, which we did, and we closed the gap for the second rally in a row, specifies Neuville. We need to continue this momentum, but for now we can enjoy our third win of the season and celebrate with the team who worked so hard for this result. »

Find the full report and analysis of the Polish Rally, produced by our special correspondent in Mikolajki, in issue 2121 of AUTOhebdo, available tomorrow evening in digital version, and from this Wednesday on newsstands.