Meeke urges C3 upgrades after Monte Carlo

The Briton finished fourth in the French Alps, ending a gruelling weekend with maximum points in the Col de Braus Power Stage after his C3 showed stellar pace in the rally-closing test on dry asphalt.

But Meeke believes the result, which left him just a point adrift of second-placed Ott Tänak in the championship standings, flattered the car.

“We can’t let it cloud the performance. The performance was awful, we were nowhere. We can’t let the points take away from the poor performance,” said the Ulsterman.

“Seventeen points and one point off second in the championship - it’s only a rally like Monte-Carlo where you can be completely nowhere in terms of pace and do that.

“We were possibly the slowest car there apart from Bouffier, and no disrespect to Bouffier because it was his first time ever in a 2017 car. It’s been a very painful weekend because things need to completely change if we ever want to be competitive on this rally.”

Meeke lost more than 90sec in the opening icy Thoard - Sisteron stage after getting stuck in a ditch. He climbed the order as his rivals hit problems in one of the most tricky Montes of recent years as conditions changed constantly.

“The target for me was 30 points after two rallies and we have 17 in the bag. We put it behind us and we go, because hopefully we can improve from where we were in Sweden last year also.

“We can’t arrive to Rallye Monte-Carlo and expect this to happen again. The result came to us. We’re fortunate but we’ll take the points,” he added.