Thierry Neuville is talking about his crash in Stage 6 of Rally Japan which was caused by a compression.
The Belgian driver was in second place overall, when the Friday afternoon loop started, and he managed to decrease his gap from the rally leader Elfyn Evans to 10,5 seconds after the end of SS5. However, he was just 100 meters into Stage 6 when he hit a compression resulting in understeering off the road and hitting the trees. After his accident, it was impossible for him to continue in Stage 6 as he damaged the suspension of his i20N, but the most important thing is that he was among the Rally1 drivers who stated in the morning that he had never scared so much in his career by the weather and the road conditions. Hyundai Motorsport confirmed that he and Martijn Wydaeghe will restart on Saturday under the regulations of Super Rally which means that only he and Esapekka Lappi will be the representative drivers of the team for the rest of the weekend as Dani Sordo's car is unrepairable.
"It was really tough out there to be honest, it was pouring with rain and the roads were undriveable", Neuville said.
"We are used to difficult conditions but I think there is a limit, and there was no reason to take extra risk when we knew the weather would be better this afternoon.
"We got off the start line of SS6 and went through quite a big compression at the first corner; I hit the sump guard and lost the front of the car.
"With these narrow roads, there was no space to go wide and we stopped in the trees and damaged the suspension.
"This morning we were very slow due to the heavy rain, but I didn’t expect the dip to be so harsh or bounce me off the road".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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