Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville has won his second event of 2018 at Rally Portugal and has taken the World Rally Championship lead with a 19-point advantage ahead of rival Sebastien Ogier.
Neuville took the lead in Portugal on Friday afternoon by staying out of trouble when many of the front-runners hit problems and went on to double his lead over second-placed Elfyn Evans on the evening street stages through his tactical use of the soft tyre.
A continuation of this consistency left the Belgian 38.5 seconds ahead going into Sunday’s powerstage where he went second fastest, sealing his first Rally Portugal victory and taking four extra powerstage points.
Evans bounced back from his disappointing Rally Argentina last month with a clean drive to second, 47.3 seconds ahead of Teemu Suninen who took his first podium of his WRC career.
The Finn was engaged in a weekend-long struggle for position with fellow-countryman Esapekka Lappi who eventually finished behind him in fourth. Lappi was fastest in the powerstage and took the maximum five points and claimed to have ‘never pushed so hard’ as he did for this weekend’s result.
Dani Sordo finished fifth after a penalty for displacing a hay bale on Friday’s street stage knocked him down from his running position of third, and a smashed windscreen further hindered his Sunday.
Mads Ostberg and Craig Breen round out the front-running WRC finishers, with WRC2 championship leader Pontus Tidemand in eighth followed by fellow WRC2 competitors Lukasz Pieniazek and Stephane Lefebvre in ninth and 10th.
Ogier, championship leader going into the event, crashed out on Friday afternoon and although he restarted under Rally2 regulations he was unable to salvage his weekend with any powerstage points.
Andreas Mikkelsen and Jari-Matti Latvala also finished the weekend under Rally2 regulations after power steering problems and suspension failures respectively.
Hayden Paddon, in the fourth Hyundai running especially for this event, and Kris Meeke were unable to restart after both experiencing dramatic crashes.
