The rallies keep coming and so are the great results! It really is super motivating to see that our hard work (and Hyundai\u2019s) is bearing fruits. Portugal\u2026 aaaah, Portugal! I\u2019m not going to lie to you, this rally never really worked out well for us. It\u2019s always super complicated to find the appropriate pace in here; the sandy roads require a sideways driving, which isn\u2019t Thierry\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d style. In order to go really fast, risks need to be taken and numerous cars went off this year again.<\/p>\n
After the Super Stage on Thursday evening, we decided to follow the pace of the bests on Friday\u2026 trying not to make any mistake. Everything went great until the 7th stage. During this one, we got stuck in an opaque dust cloud; we couldn\u2019t see a thing! We catching up with Jari-Matti, who got delayed after his car rolled over, and the Toyota\u2019s dust was literally blinding us. In such cases, the key is to keep a cool head, calm your pilot and call the radio while keeping reading your notes\u2026 some might call that a party! <\/p>\n
This unfortunate event cost us about 20 seconds, but the organiser looked at the images and corrected our time: we were then in fourth position.<\/p>\n
On Saturday morning, the Fords were untouchable, and we should have taken inconsiderate risks in order to catch Ogier. Nevertheless, we got two fastest times and ended the day in second position, right behind the four-time world champion.<\/p>\n
The 4 stages on Sunday were too short to fill the gap, but we kept driving at a great pace\u2026 and we took 4 more points in the mythical Fafe Power Stage. Thierry was pushing hard and I have to admit that when we touched the ground after the Jump, I wasn\u2019t totally at ease\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the end, this second place is a great result and we are definitely in the race for the title. We also want to dedicate our performance\u00a0to our car chief and our 3 Portuguese mechanics\u2026 once again, the whole team did an amazing job!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll see you in Sardinia, for a rally that Thierry and I particularly appreciate. More fun to come!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rallies keep coming and so are the great results! It really is super motivating to see that our hard work (and Hyundai\u2019s) is bearing fruits. Portugal\u2026 aaaah, Portugal! I\u2019m not going to lie to you, this rally never really worked out well for us. It\u2019s always super complicated to find the appropriate pace in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicolasgilsoul.be\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}