Thierry Neuville says that Hyundai could not match the times of Toyota in Monte Carlo and he realized it very early in the rally while the tyre wear did not help him out.
The Belgian driver finished at the lowest place of the podium at Rallye Monte Carlo and 44,6 seconds behind the winner Sebastien Ogier, but generally he was not able to catch up the Toyota drivers. However, it was the only one driver among Hyundai and M-Sport who was able to stop Toyota's domination as he set the fastest time in two stages. Last but not least, it must be mentioned that he was fighting for the second place with Kalle Rovanpera on Friday afternoon as their gap was at four tenths of a second when Neuville dropped to third overall at the end of Stage 6.
"Generally, I think we must be satisfied with the end result, just because we have seen very early in the rally that it seems like we couldn’t really follow the pace of the other guys", Neuville said.
"And despite trying, we were never really able to set any good times.
"Just always a couple of seconds behind, constantly losing time.
"We had so much tyre wear compared to the others all weekend and we are missing speed.
"Even if we are taking risks at some points, we can't match the others.
"As a team together, we probably didn’t expect the conditions to be so dry and we prepared more for a normal Monte-Carlo, where you go for softer settings.
"At the end it didn’t work out.
"I felt a bit powerless sometimes".
Source: wrc.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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