Portugal a disaster - Neuville

Thierry Neuville: We'll be going through everything in detail to make sure that we will do better for the future.

23 May 2016

Hyundai's Thierry Neuville has described his Rally de Portugal as a "disaster" after finishing a lowly 29th.

Neuville had worked his way up to fifth in his new generation i20 WRC, after a slow time in the first proper test on Friday. However, he had to park his car on Saturday in SS11, when he ran out of fuel. Hyundai later confirmed the issue was down to "human error".

"This rally has been a disaster for us. We were doing well but we ran out of fuel," Neuville said after the final stage.

Speaking back in service he added: "It's been a challenging weekend for all of us in the team, but we'll be going through everything in detail to make sure that we will do better for the future.

"We showed reasonable performance but there are things we can still improve, and we'll work hard as a team to achieve that."

"We had nothing really to fight for on Sunday [after re-joining under Rally 2], so it was a case of just bringing the car to the finish," he continued.

"We focused on keeping our driving clean and tidy but also trying to have a bit of fun on these final stages. The Fafe jump was as enjoyable as ever, although we had a bit of a harsh landing on the first pass!

"The next rally is in Sardinia now where we have special memories from last year, when we finished on the podium - and that's going to be our target again this year."