After 17 years of hard graft, Thierry Neuville can finally call himself a world rally champion. Five-times a runner-up, the Hyundai driver enjoyed a standout season by leading the championship from start to finish, a feat most recently achieved by Sebastien Ogier in 2016.
Neuville scored two impressive victories, the first in Monte Carlo with the season’s only maximum points haul, while the second at the Acropolis Rally came despite opening the roads. Neuville mastered the WRC’s new points system the best. His speed and consistency, as one of only two drivers to score points in every round, was duly rewarded.
How Neuville thrived under pressure
There could be no question asked of Neuville’s speed over the years, as he came into the year already with 19 WRC wins under his belt, but the Belgian has been known to make mistakes when in strong positions.
Yet this season Neuville appeared much mentally tougher under pressure and although Kalle Rovanpera wasn’t defending his 2023 world title this year having opted to conduct a partial programme, the competition remained intense.
Leading the championship from the start to the finish comes with its pressures; notably opening the road at seven consecutive gravel events. Being chased by 2019 world champion Ott Tanak, eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier and multiple runner-up Elfyn Evans comes with a weight on anyone’s shoulders - especially given how close Neuville has previously come to titles.
But when assessing his title year, Neuville only suffered one major setback that can be regarded as a pure driver error. That came when he lost concentration and ran off the road in Sardinia, his only day-ending retirement of the season.
There were a couple of spins while leading the Central European Rally and a run-in with a bank in Croatia down to a late pacenote, but these didn’t result in rally-ending retirements and zero points scores that his rivals all suffered.
Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul revealed to Autosport after the Monte Carlo win that he’d never seen his driver stronger and admitted that they had discussed the unforced errors that had been a semi-regular feature of a 2023 Neuville ended by crashing while chasing victory in Japan.
“It is true that when he was getting close to those opportunities for wins, something happened,” Abiteboul said. “We discussed this and we talked it through and it was an interesting debrief of last year. It is not easy to talk these things through, but we did.
“I hope that maybe what happened this weekend [in Monte Carlo] is also because he is a stronger person, stronger driver and stronger competitor than he has ever been.”
Abitbeoul also believes that structures and people put in place at Hyundai over the last 12 months have helped take away the pressure from Neuville, which co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe highlighted.
“Our strong point this year is our mental side and our mindset,” said Wydaeghe. “We kept pushing and optimising everything. That was the key to the success.
“It also shows that everything around us was working well; the team and everyone around us, we had a good bubble of five or six people. This is what we need to be protected from all these things.”
But when Neuville was asked about dealing with the pressures, he simply said: “It is not so easy, but it is probably the experience.
“I’m very aware that I’m living a dream at some point and there are only a few that live that and get that opportunity to do what I have dreamed of.
“So I always try to tell myself that, if things don’t go your way, you are still living dream and try to benefit from it.”
