Hi everyone! I am writing to you today with a bright smile and a sombrero on my head… the same sombrero that was offered by the organisers to the top three crews. Rally Mexico really is one of a kind. People here are incredibly enthusiastic!<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands fans partying four days long, accosting us for a selfie, an autograph or simply to encourage us. And they all are in a really good mood. It really is awesome to see the enthusiasm this rally arouses throughout the country, including in the capital, Mexico City. I personally love it. It’s a genuine energy boost! But Mexico also means unique rally conditions related to the heat and the altitude… and these were impossible to recreate during our testing in Europe.<\/p>\n
After an excellent start, these tough conditions caused our Hyundai some trouble. During the stage El Chocolate, the altitude, the ambient heat and the twisty roads combined caused the water temperature to overheat, and the car switched to safety mode. We then had some trouble with the fuel filter, which slowed us down during the last stages and made us lose some valuable seconds. At the end of the day, we were in third position, trailing Kris Meeke by almost a minute and Seb Ogier by 30 seconds. The gap was too significant to attempt to fill it without further incident.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the \u2014 once again \u2014 outstanding work of our mechanics, our car hit the road on Saturday and finished the rally without any more problems. With our road position, we avoided any \u00ab\u00a0track sweeping\u00a0\u00bb issue on the incredibly dusty roads and Thierry, who was totally in control, set some excellent times, which allowed us to finish this rally at the third place. On top of that, we did the fastest time in the Power Stage, which means 5 bonus points.<\/p>\n
This podium rewards the work of the whole team and gives us confidence for the next rally. About that, the conference after the rally was quite interesting since Kris, S\u00e9bastien and Thierry all said that they intended to win the Tour de Corse… This should be interesting! 😀<\/p>\n
Thanks again for your support!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi everyone! I am writing to you today with a bright smile and a sombrero on my head… the same sombrero that was offered by the organisers to the top three crews. Rally Mexico really is one of a kind. People here are incredibly enthusiastic! Tens of thousands fans partying four days long, accosting us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}