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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.
A third fastest stage time on Friday for Thierry Neuville on the 7th special stage of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally: it was a fitting reward for the Belgian driver, who started his rally cautiously on Thursday evening but began to show his class on Friday, in a Hyundai inspiring him a lot more confidence.
Neuville set the fastest time on SS3, followed by SS6 and then SS7, the second stage between Champcella and Saint-Clément (17.87km). In the space of a few hours, he was back to 8.7 seconds behind Sébastien Ogier and 17.3 seconds behind Elfyn Evans, just one stage away from the end of this superb rallying day (105 timed kilometers), on the heights of Gap.
“It was a good stage,” smiled Neuville when he was told at the stage end that he had just taken 4.6 seconds off Evans, while waiting to find out that he was also going to claw back 3.5 seconds from Ogier. The two Toyota drivers are not out of reach yet, and as we have not yet reached the halfway point of the rally (17 stages on the menu), Hyundai can still have high hopes for this weekend.
SS7 was a very technical stage, with lots of hairpins, tight sections over bridges and through villages. The road was dry, but very dirty, with a lot of mud spread by dozens of competitors since this morning. “It was a bit dirty at the end, there was a lot of dirt and stones. Maybe I wasn’t brave enough in the narrowest and dirtiest sections,” admitted Evans.
Ogier quicker than Evans
“There’s nothing special to report, apart from the fact that we’re starting to be able to fight on equal terms with the other drivers,” summed up Ogier. He was happy to see that his main rivals were finally on the same footing, faced with a road as dirty as his own. And another challenge is becoming more and more crucial: to start managing the quota of soft tyres cleverly, by using super-soft tyres from time to time, in preparation for what promises to be a very turbulent weekend.
There was one beaming driver at the end of SS7, Norway’s Andreas Mikkelsen (Hyundai), back in Rally1 after four seasons of purgatory in WRC2, since the end of 2019: “It’s getting better and better and I have to adapt to the speeds you can reach in corners with these cars. It’s not so much the hybrid system, it’s mainly the aero. It’s great to be able to get back into a bit of a rhythm on the stages”.
Fourmaux delighted with his Friday
Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford), also returning to Rally1 this year, also enjoyed Friday’s action: “I love driving and it’s great to have so many different stages in the same loop. We had everything today, dirt, ice and changing conditions. It’s Monte Carlo and that’s what we love”.
The WRC2 drivers also love the Monte Carlo Rally. After SS7, Spain’s Pepe Lopez (Skoda Fabia RS) took over the category lead from Nikolay Gryazin (Citroën C3), by just four seconds. And Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3), the 2021 WRC3 champion, remains in the hunt, less than two seconds behind Gryazin. With just one stage left before returning to Gap for a good night’s sleep.
The three main players on the 92nd edition of the Monte-Carlo Rally are all on equal terms: two stage wins each. Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), who had already set the fastest time on SS3 early this morning, was again the fastest on SS6 early this afternoon. But he was only a second and a half ahead of Seb Ogier, who had just set two fastest times (SS4, SS5). His Toyota team-mate, Elfyn Evans, is still the overall leader, having totally dominated Thursday evening (SS1, SS2).
This was the 6th special stage of this rally, as a second run of 16.68km between the ski resort of Saint-Léger-Les-Mélèzes and the village of La Bâtie-Neuve. It was much quicker, as the ice had melted, and the gap was just 1.6s between Neuville and Ogier, and 2.6s between the Belgian Hyundai driver and Evans.
“I’ve always been quick on this stage, it’s beautiful, but it’s difficult to know how far you can push the tyres (so as not to overheat them), but I think we set a good time,” said Neuville, still in contention for a win, while Tänak has dropped back a little, over a minute behind the leader. Still the same leader though, Evans, but whose margin for error has shrunk to less than ten seconds, chased by Ogier.
Under the eyes of his former great rival, the “other Seb” Loeb, who was present at the side of the road as a simple spectator, Ogier once again defended himself well: “We’re trying not to hit the tyres too much, and for the moment it’s been a pretty good day”, said the local hero, still in striking distance of his Welsh team-mate.
A big fight also in WRC2
The situation is totally clear in the Top 8: the four leaders at the front, i.e. two Toyota drivers (Evans, Ogier) ahead of two Hyundai drivers (Neuville, Tänak), and the other four further back: Fourmaux, 12 seconds behind the Estonian, Mikkelsen, Munster and Katsuta, much further back. The Japanese driver lost five minutes this morning in a ditch on SS3, in the same curve as Tänak.
In WRC2, the battle is also raging, with twice more car manufacturers represented (6) than in Rally1 and quite a great mix of enthusiasm and experience. A third of the way through the rally, the WRC2 leader is Russia’s Nikolay Gryazin (Citroën C3), competing under a Bulgarian licence, ahead of Spain’s Pepe Lopez (Skoda Fabia RS) and France’s Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3), who was crowned in WRC3 at the end of the 2021 season. All grouped within 5 secondes, and only two stages to go before returning to Gap on Friday evening…
Two fastest times in a row for Sébastien Ogier on Friday morning, in SS4 and then SS5 between La Bréole and Selonnet (18.31km). The local hero made the most of this first loop of stages to move up to 2nd in the overall standings, 10.7 seconds behind Elfyn Evans, his Toyota team-mate. The 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally is well underway and suspense is total. For the 3rd place on the podium as well, since Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford) is driving faster and faster…
“It looks like I’m still alive. I’ve had a complicated week but I’m going to do my best. I’ll talk about it after the rally…” said a particularly emotional Seb Ogier at the end of this special stage, which marked the return to the impressive driving style which brought him eight world titles.
Faced with Ogier in maestro mode, the rally leader is still Evans, but he is now just ten seconds ahead of his French team-mate, 40 since December 17. His favourite number, the one he also carries as a race number on his black Yaris. Beaten by Ogier by 11.2 seconds on SS5, the Welshman was not confident: “There’s very little grip in the icy sections, and a lot more in the dry sections,” summed up the reigning vice-world champion.
Fourmaux raises his game
In addition to Ogier’s, the most successful performance of the stage came from M-Sport Ford driver Adrien Fourmaux, who set the 3rd fastest time just behind Evans, six-tenths only behind the Welshman. “We had a good set-up and some very good notes, so I felt good and enjoyed myself without taking too many risks. I’m happy,” said the Frenchman, back in Rally 1 after a season in WRC2.
On the Hyundai side, Ott Tänak found a good rhythm again and did better than his team-mate Thierry Neuville, on this stage, to make up for his small mistake on SS3. “I had a lot of mentions of icy conditions in my notes and I was too cautious. It’s complicated to take more risks when the co-driver’s notes say that there’s black ice everywhere”, regretted the Belgian at the stop point. He is now 3rd overall, 24.5 seconds behind Ogier, but anything is still possible on the remaining 12 stages until Sunday morning.
After the midday break in the Gap service park, a second loop is scheduled for this afternoon, with a second pass in the same three stages (SS6 to SS8). One thing is certain: they will be less slippery than in the morning version.
Last year’s winner waited until mid-morning on Friday to set his first fastest time of the 92ndMonte-Carlo Rally: best time for Sébastien Ogier in his black Toyota Yaris on the first pass of the day between Champcella and Saint-Clément (17.87km), to come within just three seconds of Neuville, who lost a handful of seconds in a spin.
“I think it’s difficult to go faster with this starting position (the same as Thursday evening, based on the 2023 championship standings), but in this stage there was a little less dirt on the road,” reacted the eight-time world champion after the 693rd fastest time of his WRC career.
“I don’t understand. I lost the rear, suddenly. I was surprised,” said Neuville, who chose the right spot for his spin: a dry, flat field in which he didn’t lose too much time. He reversed and started again, losing 9 seconds to Ogier, just when the Belgian driver could aim for a second fastest time in a row.
Evans stays ahead
The rally leader is still Elfyn Evans (Toyota), who has switched to management mode. He still holds a 18.8-second lead over Neuville going into SS5, the last of the first loop, and 21.9 seconds over Ogier. “The grip was very low in some places. It wasn’t easy and maybe I was too careful,” admitted the Welshman.
The route of SS4 was varied, dry on the whole, and the numerous spectators were very disciplined, well protected by the ACM marshals and hundreds of metres of tape. Behind Ogier and Evans, Ott Tänak (Hyundai) regained his confidence after his small mistake on SS3. With the 3rd fastest time, he moved back to 4th overall, ahead of Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford), the Frenchman happy with his new set-up. But the Estonian, the 2019 world champion, found the road “dirty”, which encouraged him to drive “clean”.
In the chasing pack, the battle continued to rage between three supporting roles in this suspenseful play: Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota), Andreas Mikkelsen (Hyundai) and Grégoire Munster (M-Sport Ford), very close in performance at the end of this SS4. A really superb stage, from start to finish.
After a short night in Gap, the 67 remaining competitors of the 92nd Monte-Carlo Rally set off on Friday morning on a slippery and tricky special stage between Saint-Léger-les-Mélèzes and La Bâtie-Neuve (SS3, 16.68km). The first laurels of the day went to Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), who set his first fastest time of the rally, and the first damage was done to three members of the Top 8: Tänak, Katsuta and Munster, who all crashed out in the same corner.
You had to be wide awake this morning on Col de Moissière (1574m), as the road was very slippery on SS3. “On some portions of ice, there was no grip at all, so I was very careful. We’ve sorted out our problem from last night, so it’s going better,” explained Neuville at La Bâtie Neuve, after a long descent that was much drier than the ascent to the pass.
The Belgian, who won in Monaco in 2020, was 5.3 seconds quicker than rally leader Elfyn Evans (Toyota) in that stage, and the third fastest time on SS3 was set by Sébastien Ogier, 6.6 seconds behind Neuville. “It was OK, but I was more bothered by the dirt on the road than by the icy patches,” said the title holder, wide awake but very cautious on his home turf. “I was careful because the road conditions were very mixed,” also admitted Evans. He is well aware of the number of points to be taken in this opening round of WRC 2024, since he sometimes has a tendency to squander opportunities.
Tänak, Katsuta and Munster trapped
Three drivers were trapped in the same place, going too wide on a long right-hand curve in the forest, where the layer of ice was thin but very effective. Starting on soft tyres, they all ended up in the ditch, more or less deeply. And the spectators intervened to get them out of it, once the green light on their car was on to avoid electrocution.
Ott Tänak, the 2019 world champion, took his 150th WRC start on Thursday (19 wins, 46 podiums, 356 fastest times, half of them with Martin Jarveoja in the right seat). He lost 41.9 seconds to Neuville in the process, and Grégoire Munster, the new M-Sport Ford driver, lost a full minute. The biggest loss was for Takamoto Katsuta, stuck in the ditch for five minutes. “It’s entirely my fault”, admitted the Japanese Toyota driver before setting off again, well harnessed, towards the sunny descent of SS3.
With 5 more stages on the menu this Friday, M-Sport’s Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux has moved up one place in the overall standings. He is 4th before SS4, with a three-second lead over Tänak…
Two fastest times in two stages, 15 seconds clear of the quickest Hyundai driver in the overall standings: in the middle of the night, on narrow roads, in front of thousands of delighted fans, reigning world vice-champion Elfyn Evans (Toyota) took control of the 92nd Rallye Monte-Carlo on Thursday evening.
After putting Ott Tänak 5.2 seconds back in SS1, Evans punished the other Hyundai top driver, Thierry Neuville, in SS2: a 6.8-second gap on the Belgian on the 25.1km Bayons-Bréziers stage, and therefore a 15-second margin in the overall standings, at the end of a long evening of rallying. The public was out in force. There were campfires, fireworks, flags in abundance and lots of people lining the roads of the Alpes de Haute-Provence and Hautes-Alpes departments.
“There were portions where things went better than in others. I have no idea how the others are going to cope”, said Evans at the stop point of SS2. One more time, he had dominated the stage, head and shoulders, in his superb black Yaris.
One Hyundai driver after another. Ott Tänak, the 2019 world champion, had even more throttle problems than in SS1, so he lost out big time: 17.6 seconds down on Evans, while Neuville limited the damage rather well. “I had a small problem, so I was careful” summed up the Belgian as he emerged rather relieved from this tricky first evening.
It was also an evening that cost Andreas Mikkelsen dearly, as he returned to Hyundai in the Rally1 category that he left at the end of 2019, with a 6th place at Rally GB: “I need to get used to this (hybrid) car, it keeps accelerating when I enter the corners. And at the start of this stage, I stalled because the procedure is a bit complicated,” said the Norwegian.
Ogier on the provisional podium
“It was OK, but it’s difficult to go as fast as the frontrunners because the road is dirty,” explained Seb Ogier at the stop-off point on SS2. The eight-time world champion, who turned 40 in December, put his experience to good use throughout the evening, on roads that he knows very well. He will start Friday’s long day (6 stages) in 3rd place overall, 21.6 seconds behind Evans, ahead of Tänak (4th) and Adrien Fourmaux (5th). On his return to Rally1, the young Frenchman did much better than Mikkelsen and, above all, enjoyed himself without damaging anything on his Ford Puma.
“We may have gone a bit too far with the set-up. In the second stage, the road was even dirtier than in the first. I’m still learning how this car behaves”, Fourmaux summed up. He is in a waiting position, behind four major players of the WRC, as a big day of rallying looms on Friday in the Hautes-Alpes.
There will be two loops of three stages, totalling 105km of timed sections, and there could be a few surprises on the way, early in the morning: “Maybe there will be a bit of ice on the road on Friday morning,” warned the M-Sport driver.
