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WRC
Thierry Neuville leads a Hyundai 1-2-3 at WRC Acropolis
Hyundai landed a podium lock-out for the first time as the Acropolis Rally bared its teeth. Here's all that went down.
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Rewind to the top of the season. It’s Monte Carlo and Hyundai’s 2022 effort was already being declared a busted flush – team principal Julien Moncet admitted they were fortunate to get three i20 N Rally1s to the start line.
Another Sunday afternoon eight months on and things are looking very different. The Frankfurt-based squad has just painted the Acropolis Rally of Gods podium blue and orange.
For the third rally in succession, it’s a Hyundai win. More importantly, for the first time ever, it’s a clean sweep of all three steps.
Thierry Neuville. Ott Tänak. Dani Sordo. A Hyundai one-two-three.
Talking to Moncet in Monte Carlo, he wasn’t quite a broken man – but he wasn’t far off. Talking to him in Greece on Sunday, he could barely conceal a giggle. Not even his wildest dreams would have comprised such a mid-season fightback.
Quite probably, the WRC titles are still heading for Kalle Rovanperä and Toyota, but what Moncet and his band of increasingly merry men and women have done is reinstall genuine belief in their own ability to stand on top of the world once more.
Neuville’s broken duck
The Belgian was a very worthy winner of the 10th round of the season. He was well within striking distance of Sébastien Loeb when the early leader hit trouble. When the alternator on the nine-time champ’s Ford Puma Rally1 Hybrid failed, Neuville stepped forward and didn’t look back.
Admittedly, through Sunday he probably didn’t want to look back. Team-mate Tänak was closing and there was a real expectation the Belgian would be told to step aside and offer his colleague more points in his marginally more realistic pursuit of runaway leader Rovanperä.
Arriving in Athens for what would be an exceptional opening stage around the Olympic Stadium on Thursday night, Neuville was 97 points behind the high-flying Finn at the top of the table. Tänak was only 72 down on him.
Having crashed out of the lead at the previous round, Neuville had announced his title fight was over. So, presumably he wouldn’t mind stepping aside to strengthen his team-mate’s own aspirations?
He grinned. Then he removed his glasses, gave them a polish and replaced them. Fiddled with his Red Bull cap and searched for the right response. He grinned again
“Mathematically,” he said, “I still have a chance.”
So that’s a no.
“I didn’t say no,” he said with a smile.
“But I didn’t say yes.”
In the end, it was Hyundai Motorsport president Sean Kim who did the talking.
It was a no.
Neuville would win and Tänak would take second.
Hyundai’s been far from the most harmonious of places this year and the decision certainly took the edge off its history-re-writing result. Everybody had a point: Kim wanted to protect his dominant one-two-three, Neuville wanted his first win since November last year and Tänak wanted seven more points to further narrow the gap to the championship leader.
If the difference is sub-seven at the season’s end, Hyundai will undoubtedly regret this decision.
Understandably, the team’s management had little interest in such talk, preferring to talk about their historic result. Bravo to a team apparently re-born.
Greece was Greece
Coming out of Kenya in the summer, there was almost a sigh of relief from some of the teams. They’d made it. They’d emerged from the roughest of the rough.
Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala reserved judgement. Sage as ever, the Finn had felt the sting of the Acropolis too many times to overlook this one.
“Greece can bite as well,” he said. “Greece has the teeth.”
The forlorn figures around the Toyota service park emphasised the prescience of those words.
The GR Yaris Rally1 endured its worst outing of the season. Toyota Gazoo Racing, it’s worst performance since returning to the WRC in 2017.
From four cars started and only Katsuta Takamoto went the distance. And the Japanese driver was more than six minutes slower than Neuville across three rough days north and south of Athens.
M-Sport Ford fared a little better with Pierre-Louis Loubet and Craig Breen registering fourth and fifth from an event which had promised so much to the British squad. On Friday night Loeb and Loubet were one-two after an outstanding opening day for the factory Pumas. Punctures and problems ended hopes of a second win of the season.
Greece’s Acropolis Rally of Gods demanded strength, power and fortitude to succeed. Hyundai and Neuville demonstrated those Kratos-like attributes to deliver in the perfect place to re-write history.
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