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Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) won the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally on Sunday after an impressive display of driving that makes him the logical favourite for the 2024 World Rally Championship (WRC).
The Belgian had to beat Sébastien Ogier (Toyota), the absolute benchmark in WRC (9 Monte-Carlo wins, 99 podiums), to take the laurels for the second time in the Principality, after his victory in 2020. He takes the maximum number of points available under the new championship scale (30), since he also won the Power Stage in Col de Turini.
The podium, behind Neuville and Ogier, the untouchables, was completed by Elfyn Evans (Toyota), the reigning vice-world champion, who lead the race from Thursday night to Saturday morning. The places of honour, in the Top 5, were taken by Ott Tänak (Hyundai), the 2019 World Champion, and Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford).
The colours of French rallying were also well defended by Yohan Rossel (Citroën), the 2021 WRC3 champion: he won the WRC2 category thanks to a fastest time, fair and square, in Col de Turini, although he was only third in the standings on Sunday morning when he left the service park in Gap.
With just 14.8km to go on Col de Turini (SS17) and a 13.5-second lead over Sébastien Ogier, it’s starting to look good for Thierry Neuville, leader of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally and fastest on SS16 between Digne-les-Bains and Chaudon-Norante (16.01km), in order to show, one more time, who is the boss this year.
“So far, so good. It was a bit more slippery than expected at the start and really dirty at the end, but I’m feeling fine. There’s still one stage to go and I need to stay focused on the Power Stage,” summed up the Belgian, as serene and smiling as ever. He knows the feeling, since he has already won the opening event of WRC in 2020, ahead of Ogier, after a similar driving display.
“It was already over after the first special stage (this morning),” agreed Ogier, with a smile on his face. “Thierry is flying. I’m not the kind of guy who takes risks for nothing”, Ogier added, as if already acknowledging his defeat, without waiting for SS17 on Col de Turini. But the Gap man is not disappointed, and he says it clearly: “If I don’t win a 10th time here, it doesn’t really matter, because I’ve already won nine times, and nobody has done as well”. Not even Seb Loeb, who has won 9 times in Spain and Germany, but only 8 times in Monte-Carlo.
There will be two drivers to keep a close eye on in SS17, aiming for the 5 points awarded to the Power Stage winner: Elfyn Evans (3rd) and Ott Tänak (4th), at the end of a rather frustrating weekend. They would love to close it in style, with a bit of panache, especially if the two aliens ease off a bit… which is far from guaranteed!
In WRC2, on the other hand, the game is far from over. There is now only a 0.9 second gap left between Pepe Lopez (Skoda) and Yohan Rossel (Citroën), while Nikolay Gryazin has dropped back to third, 5 seconds behind. Not over yet…
To kick off the grand finale of the 92nd Monte Carlo Rally in style, Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) put pedal to the metal in SS15 (La Bréole-Selonnet, 18.31km), the same stage where Sébastien Ogier had been dominant on Friday (SS5, SS8). This was enough to extend his lead over the Frenchman from 3.3 to 8 seconds, with just 33km of timed sections remaining…
It was very early on Sunday morning, daylight was just breaking and there was black ice everywhere in the second part of this very fast special, but none of the top drivers let themselves be surprised. Especially not Neuville and Ogier, engaged in a sumptuous mano a mano keeping rally fans on the edge of their seats since Thursday night.
“It’s great! At the start, I pushed a lot, and towards the end I was a bit more cautious, but I think that everyone else must have done the same. We did some good things and I’m happy with my time,” said a beaming Neuville, still very much at ease in his Hyundai i20N. Thanks also to star engineer François-Xavier Demaison (ex-Citroën, VW Motorsport and Williams F1), who has already made some precious improvements to the South Korean car.
“The conditions were interesting, with a bit of black ice in places, so I was perhaps too cautious. He [Thierry Neuville] pushed a lot,” admitted Ogier when admiring his Belgian rival’s performance, posted on the end of stage board, after having conceded 4.7 seconds to him over 18 km. Without slowing down so much on the way.
The two other members of the initial Group of Four, Ott Tänak and Elfyn Evans, also showed in that stage that they were ready to take as many points as possible this Sunday: 7 for the whole of the final day, 5 for the Power Stage, i.e. a maximum of 12 points to add to the points already scored on Saturday. To be continued.
Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) will start the final day of the 92ndMonte Carlo Rally as the overall leader, after a beautiful battle against Sébastien Ogier. He set a memorable fastest time on SS9 on Saturday morning, to kick off Day 3 in style, and ended it in the same way with another phenomenal fastest time on SS14, at sunset.
Thanks to beating Ogier (Toyota) by 4.1 seconds between Pellafol and Agnières-en-Dévoluy (21.37 km), the Belgian regained the upper hand in this high-flying duel that pitted him all day against the Frenchman, beaten fair and square on the day: “Since the start of the rally, I’ve done my utmost to try and catch him, in fact, but today I didn’t do enough. He (Neuville) did a good stage. We’ll have to push even more tomorrow,” smiled the eight-time world champion as he looked at his rival’s time on the board at the end of the stage.
“We did a good stage, it was perfection,” reacted Neuville at the last stop of this long day (120 km). He had already said, after the previous stage, that “everything is in place, everything is going well”. He repeated it, clearly delighted with his performance, and added some detailed insight: “I’m really enjoying the car, it’s incredible. Obviously, it was important to take the points tonight but we need to keep the car on the road [until tomorrow]”.
Neuville and Ogier on another planet
This Saturday evening, before the last three stages on Sunday morning (SS15 to 17), Neuville has a 3.3 second lead over Ogier, and above all 18 points in the World Championship, under the new points scale. There is just one condition to fulfil: to complete the rally on Sunday, in Monaco, whatever his position in Sunday’s classification.
There’s something new this year in the WRC, and Elfyn Evans, who has been on a back foot since Friday morning, is determined to make the most of it: “With the new format, tomorrow is a new day, and that’s how we’re going to attack it,” summed up the Welshman from Toyota. He was completely outclassed on Saturday by the Neuville-Ogier duet, he only holds 13 points tonight, but he is capable of pulling out a great Sunday to take 7 more points, plus 5 for winning the Power Stage.
The provisional assessment of this rally is clear: this week, Neuville and Ogier are aliens, as Evans is relegated to 34.9 seconds and Tänak to almost two minutes. When it comes to fastest times in the stages, there’s no photo finish either: 6 for Ogier, including the 700thof his career on SS13, 5 for Neuville (3 on Friday, 2 on Saturday), 2 for Evans and just one for Tänak (on SS11, by 12 thousandths of a second). Roll on Sunday!
There is a new leader in this 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally: Sébastien Ogier (Toyota), thanks to his fastest time on SS13 (20.04km) this afternoon between Les Nonières (Drôme) and Chichilianne (Isère), has moved ahead of Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) by just eight-tenths of a second. There is just one more special stage to negotiate (SS14) before the end of this 3rd long day of rallying (120km of timed stages).
“We need to keep attacking. It’s very close, which is good. We love to fight and that’s good for the fans too. There is no time to back off now, we just need to keep pushing,” Ogier said at the end of SS13, delighted to have made up, in four stages, the time he lost early this morning on SS9.
Ogier, the luxury freelancer, is performing much better this Saturday than Elfyn Evans, the full-time Toyota driver: “I’m really struggling in the sections where there’s little grip, especially in terms of confidence. The others are clearly going faster than me this afternoon”, summed up the Welsh vice-world champion, lucid about the level of his performance.
As for Neuville, Ogier’s last rival for overall victory on the Col de Turini on Sunday, he hasn’t given up yet, far from it, even though he has just suffered two consecutive setbacks in his duel at the summit with the eight-time world champion. Like Evans, he is aiming for the world title this year. And this weekend, he began to get the better of his team-mate Ott Tänak, on the back foot since Friday morning.
In WRC2, the battle is as intense as ever. After SS12, Spain’s Pepe Lopez (Skoda Fabia RS) is once again leading the category, ahead of Russia’s Nikolay Gryazin (Citroën C3) and Frenchman Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3), the 2021 WRC3 champion. The three drivers are within 11.6 seconds of each other. Game on!
Sébastien Ogier, the defending champion, clawed back a handful of seconds from Thierry Neuville early on Saturday afternoon by setting the fastest time on SS12, the second pass between Esparron and Oze (18.79km). The suspense remains intact at the top of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally, with the Toyota driver only 2.2 seconds behind the Hyundai driver.
The margin is tiny, insane, barely believable: one hundredth of a second per kilometre, if you divide 2.2 seconds by the 220 km covered since the start on Thursday evening in the Alpes de Haute-Provence. That’s the gap between Neuville and Ogier, with around a hundred kilometres left until the grand finale on Sunday in Col de Turini. The battle is total, intense, between two drivers at the top of their game who have, so far, avoided all the traps of this 2024 edition.
Behind Neuville and Ogier, their rivals are falling behind, one by one. First there was Tänak, who crashed out on SS3 and has been doing his best since Friday morning to climb back on the podium. The most recent setback was that of Elfyn Evans, who led from Thursday evening until Saturday morning, but who is now unable to set a single fastest time.
Munster stuck in a barrier
“It did not feel so great, but that’s a bit chronic (this week),” said the Welshman at the end of SS12, at siesta time. He didn’t even mention the hybrid system that had abandoned him for a few minutes this morning. The reigning world vice-champion is now a privileged observer of this battle of the chiefs, 16.5 seconds behind the Belgian and 14.3 seconds behind the 8-time World Champion, in a Toyota Yaris strictly identical to his own.
The main incident of SS12 involved Grégoire Munster, who had been very clean and efficient up to that point in his M-Sport Ford Puma, on his first Rally1 event, in the top category (his 24th rally in WRC conditions). The Belgian (with a Luxembourg licence) made a small error at km 6.3 and his Puma got stuck in a wooden safety barrier on the edge of a ravine. The co-driver then went to the side of the road, upstream of the bend, to warn other competitors who slowed down at this point, all losing a handful of seconds. The stage was not neutralised.
The fastest time on SS11 (Pellafol-Agnières-en-Dévoluy, 21.37km) was set by two Hyundai drivers, Ott Tänak, the 2019 World Champion, and Thierry Neuville, the provisional leader of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally. This 1-2 by the Korean brand showed that the 2024 version of the Hyundai i20N has everything it takes to do well against the Toyota Yaris this season.
“It’s an unfamiliar stage, so I didn’t take too many risks. And I couldn’t hear my co-driver’s notes very well, especially in the last section,” explained Neuville, who seems to be, more and more, in control of the rally after a cautious start on Thursday evening. The Belgian, five times runner-up in the World Championship, returned to the Gap service park at midday with a 5.1 second lead over Elfyn Evans and a 7.7 second lead over Sébastien Ogier.
Both Toyota drivers – one of whom, the Welshman, will be aiming for the world title, while the other, the Frenchman, will be content with a few official outings – may well have found someone to talk to, this season. Particularly if the new version of the Hyundai i20N, developed by technical director François-Xavier Demaison, an exceptional engineer from Citroën and then Volkswagen, continues to prove as reliable as it is efficient.
Hyundai on a high
The good performances this week by Neuville, and this morning by Tänak, show that this new Hyundai is healthy and easy to drive, and that it could be the pleasant surprise of the start of the 2024 season, against the ogre Toyota. In the meantime, there are still three stages to go this afternoon (SS12 to 14), the same as this morning, and three more on Sunday morning (SS15 to 17) on the way back to Monaco.
In WRC2, the battle is as fierce as ever. After SS10, Russia’s Nikolay Gryazin (Citroën C3) was leading the way again, ahead of Spain’s Pepe Lopez (Skoda Fabia RS) and Frenchman Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3), the 2021 WRC3 champion. The three drivers are all within 9 seconds of each other, on another planet compared to their rivals. Same as in Rally1.
It was the first major turning point of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally: on SS10 this morning, between Les Nonières (Drôme) and Chichilianne (Isère), a rather quick 20.04km stage, Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) took the overall lead by just nine-tenths of a second from Elfyn Evans (Toyota), the leader since the start on Thursday evening.
The fastest time on SS10 was indeed set by Sébastien Ogier, a fine reaction from the Toyota driver after his disappointment on SS9, but it was Neuville who did the trick, on a road that was dry on the uphill section and damper going downhill.
The Belgian winner of the 2020 edition is very calm and efficient this week: “After the tunnel, on the descent, the grip was better than expected. Maybe I was too careful with my braking zones. It was a good morning for us,” said Neuville at the end of this stage, not used in WRC since 1997 (fastest time by Armin Schwarz in a Ford Escort).
Ogier set the fastest time, his fourth of the week, despite a small incident on the stage when a stone hit his windscreen, creating a small impact. “It’s good, especially after losing so much time on the previous stage. The only thing we can do is look ahead and keep attacking,” said last year’s winner.
“We have a small issue “, said Evans at the end, without saying anything more. The surprise of this stage came from his Japanese team-mate Takamoto Katsuta, who set the 3rdfastest time as first on the road, with two super-soft tyres mounted in front. It was a bold choice, but one that paid off in the end. His aim today is to get back into the Top 10 after crashing out yesterday in SS3.
Thierry Neuville pulled out all the stops this morning on SS9 of the 92nd Rallye Monte-Carlo, between Esparron and Oze (18.79km), setting a magical, stratospheric time of 12 minutes, 12 seconds and 5 tenths, which enabled the Hyundai driver to move back ahead of Seb Ogier in the overall standings, just behind leader Elfyn Evans. The Toyota drivers will have to remain vigilant.
“I don’t understand. I must have been wide awake. The road conditions were better than expected. I did a decent stage”, smiled Neuville, totally incredulous, when his time was announced at the stop point. Not only did the Belgian beat rally leader Elfyn Evans by 9.6 seconds, but he also moved up the overall ranking. He also took the liberty to beat, fair and square, the best rally driver of the 21st century, eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier, by a huge margin: one second per kilometre (18.8 seconds for 18.8km). With the same mix of tyres, three super-soft and one soft.
“It’s a lot of lost time. My crew notes were perhaps too cautious”, judged Ogier after his under-performance due to the change in road conditions in the space of two hours, between the passage of the road crews and that of the drivers. Several drivers were surprised, like Ogier and Evans for Toyota, but not Grégoire Munster, who set the 3rd fastest time on this SS9, in his Ford Puma entered by M-Sport. This was the other great coup of the early morning, with Neuville’s completely crazy time.
As a direct consequence, the overall classification was turned upside down from the outset on Saturday morning, and Evans, still in the lead, now has a 6.5-second advantage over Neuville after SS9. He held a 4.5-second lead over Ogier when he left the parc fermé in Gap, early this morning. So everything remains possible, more than ever, in this rally, especially as Ott Tänak, in the other leading Hyundai, had a bad start of the day: impossible to start his i20N this morning in Gap, then several engine (or throttle) cuts in SS9, the same as on Thursday evening in SS1 and 2.
It was quite a day of rallying, which ended in a draw between two of the WRC’s greatest players : three fastest times for Thierry Neuville (SS3, SS6, SS7), three also for Sébastien Ogier (SS4, SS5, SS8) in this 92ndRally Monte-Carlo where the Frenchman is the title holder… with absolutely no guarantee of retaining it on Sunday.
“We did our job. We came back well (in the overall standings). It was a good day,” soberly summed up Ogier at the pitstop on SS8, which was run entirely at night and in which he put his foot down to finish the day on a high. The Frenchman from the Hautes-Alpes, eight-time world champion and nine-time winner in Monte-Carlo, is now just 4.5 seconds behind his Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans, who was dominant on Thursday evening but much more cautious on Friday (no best time all day).
“This rally is never easy. And it’s very difficult at night. I had a lot of information, but I couldn’t manage everything at once. I had to trust the notes. It was very difficult to assess the road conditions. I’m happy to have got to the end of the day without a single problem,” said the Welshman.
His lead over Neuville was 15 seconds on Friday morning when he left Gap. On Saturday morning, it will be just 4.5 seconds over another big WRC customer: the formidable Seb Ogier, who is not aiming for the world title this year. That’s something to think about before taking any unnecessary risk…
Neuville steps up the pace
The other contender for the 2024 world title is bound to be a Hyundai driver. And after eight out of 17 stages in this first round of the season, Neuville has taken the upper hand, for the time being, over his team-mate Tänak: “I’m happy to be here. It wasn’t a good morning, but we had a much better afternoon. We need to stay focused and do a better job tomorrow. We’ve made a few changes to the set-up. It went well on the first two stages [of the day]. Here, the conditions are tricky, so it’s not easy to stay focused, but we’re here”, Neuville reckoned before heading back to Gap.
His Estonian team-mate, who was driving for M-Sport Ford in 2023, needs to regain confidence in the Hyundai. That is definitely happening, slowly but surely. “We managed to finish [the stage]. It was really scary and we didn’t have a good pace, but we’ll see…”, said Tänak, the 2019 world champion, at the end of a nerve-wracking day.
The final word on Friday’s rally goes to Ogier, the local hero, who delighted the many fans lining the roads of his native region with his immaculate driving style: “It was a lot more slippery than this morning, with a lot of mud. We had a difficult start to the rally, but we expected that with our starting position. Now, I’m happy that we’ve managed to get closer [to the lead]. Tomorrow should be fun”.
Saturday: 120 km on the menu
On Saturday’s menu, there are six more tricky stages, spread over two loops of three stages, totalling 120km of timed sections. Given the current very narrow gaps between the contenders for victory, both in Rally1 (three drivers within 16 seconds of each other) and in WRC2 (three drivers within five seconds), it’s reasonable to expect that Day 3 of this rally will be very lively. If not completely wild.
