Frustrated Thierry Neuville facing WRC Rally Chile drivetrain dilemma

World rally champion Thierry Neuville is facing the prospect of taking a Hyundai drivetrain change gamble after describing his car as a “nightmare” following the opening stages at Rally Chile.

The Hyundai driver struggled across the opening morning in Chile, reporting a lack of trust in the set-up of his i20 N, while revealing that he has also been fighting transmission issues.

Neuville, who still has a mathematical chance of defending his world title this year, was advised by his team to change the transmission after encountering problems in Thursday’s shakedown. But the switch hasn’t suited Chile’s gravel stages and instead contributed to his pace struggles.

“It is more about surviving. I feel like we are experimenting during the rallies and it doesn’t feel good,” said Neuville, after ending stage three in fifth, 14.5s adrift of leader Elfyn Evans.

“I can only use the set up from the differential at the moment so it is what it is. It is a big struggle. It is a nightmare.”

At the midday service a frustrated Neuville revealed that he now faces the gamble of using the drivetrain that had problems during shakedown.

“I’m frustrated. We think we have some issue with the transmission we used in shakedown so we switched to another for this morning, which obviously isn’t great at all,” he said.

“I was struggling like hell out there but in addition to that chassis-wise I cannot get any trust so we have a couple of issues we are carrying with us, so it was really tough out there.

“There is not much we can do other than take the risk and go back to the other transmission and, if it fails, it fails. But at the moment the speed isn’t there and I don’t see the point to carry on with that performance so far. Let’s see, we might take some risk with changing the transmission back and we will cross our fingers.

«Yesterday evening I was told I have to change and now I’m told if you want to go back we can go back so what should I say? It is an engineer’s thing. I can’t tell you what is wrong and I did what I was told.

“With that pace we will go nowhere so we need to find something, honestly it is tough.”

Ogier explains surprising lack of speed

Neuville wasn’t the only WRC title contender fighting his car through the morning stages as rival Sebastien Ogier was unusually struggling for speed.

The eight-time world champion dropped 9.2s in the opening stage and continued to drop time to the lead group, before completing the loop in fourth, 13.9s adrift. The lack of speed was a shock to Ogier having dominated Rally Paraguay two weeks ago.

Sébastien Ogier, Vincent Landais, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota GR Yaris Rally1

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Competing in his 200th WRC event, Ogier believes a rare misdirection on set-up was the cause of his struggles.

“I hope and I think it [the lack of pace] is because we went a bit wrong with the set-up. I was really fighting the car a lot in the first stage and through the loop I made little adjustments but it was never really enough,” said Ogier.

“In the last stage I was really pushing and driving on the limit of what I have but it was not as fast as Elfyn, so luckily there is a service now. After 200 starts you can still get it wrong on the set-up but it has not happened too often in my career. Often I am able to handle the car I’m driving but this morning something was missing.

“I would say quite many changes are planned [in service] but changes that we know work normally. What we tried this morning wasn’t right.”