As the World Rally Championship enjoys its seven-week summer break something unusual is going on. Something that it is quite possible younger WRC fans will have never seen before. At this point in the season for the first time in 10 years the championship leader isn’t called Sebastien.
The points difference between 2018’s two leading protagonists is larger than last year but this time it’s Thierry Neuville who has the upper hand. Italy was a tense shootout between the pair, rallying at its best, but does it foreshadow a whole season taken down to the wire? Last year Neuville looked like he had the speed break Sebastien Ogier’s WRC stranglehold but when the pressure mounted costly errors crept in.
Further back the field there are plenty more stories to be told. Toyota team-mates Ott Tanak and Esapekka Lappi sit in third and fourth, whilst Jari-Matti Latvala’s magnetic attraction to car-mangling rocks leaves the last of the Toyotas down in ninth. Citroen’s unsettled season has left them at the bottom of the constructors’ championship once again while the other Hyundai drivers seem unable to wring the performance out of the i20 the way Neuville can.
With seven gruelling weekends behind us and six still to savour, we rate the driver performances of 2018 so far.
