Thierry Neuville labels WRC struggles the “hardest time of my career”

The 2024 world rally champion has struggled for confidence driving his Hyundai package this year

Thierry Neuville described his current World Rally Championship struggles as the ‘hardest time of his career so far’ following a difficult morning at Rally Sweden.

The 2024 champion has been struggling for confidence behind the wheel of his Hyundai i20 N Rally 1 this season, with his struggles from last month’s opening round in Monte Carlo continuing in Sweden.

Even after topping Thursday’s shakedown, the Belgian again repeated that he felt "something is missing to be confident”, and on Friday he went as far as saying that this current period is the hardest of his career to date.

Neuville ended the morning loop of stages sitting seventh overall, 1m37.4s behind rally leader Toyota’s Elfyn Evans. Neuville’s struggles with the balance of his car were compounded by a run into a snowbank in stage three that cost him more than a minute.

“Generally, it was ok but I’m really fighting the balance,” said Neuville at the end of stage four.

“It is not a surprise to be honest it is disturbing a lot, and it makes it very challenging. We are losing a bit of time now, but the rally is still long so we will keep working and we will see.”

Thierry Neuville, Hyundai World Rally Team Hyundai i20 N Rally1

Photo by: Hyundai

When asked about the direction the team can take with the car in the midday service, he added: “It is tough. Honestly, it is the hardest time of my career so far. We have changed so many things so you could say we are a bit lost as well, which doesn’t help.”

Speaking in the media zone about his current situation, Neuville elaborated further, adding: “I wouldn’t say that I’m very happy to be honest. We will do some changes for this afternoon, but it is pretty hard to know where to go and what to do, but if we don’t try, we will not learn anything. I guess we have to do some changes to see what it brings.”

Neuville’s Hyundai team-mates Adrien Fourmaux and Esapekka Lappi also struggled to find the pace to compete with Toyota. Fourmaux was forced to make an extreme set up change after stage two to try and find a solution.

“I was struggling a little bit with understeer on the first corners [in stage two] but I did not expect that big a gap I would say,” he said. “I decided to go quite extreme on the set up to make the car work better.

“It is a bit more difficult to drive but at the end it seems to be faster. It is not the pace I would like to be but it is an improvement, so maybe we can fight for something from there.”