Praise for Neuville from team boss

Thierry Neuville might have come up short in his bid to win the Intercontinental Rally Challenge but that hasn’t stopped his team chief Marc van Dalen from heaping praise on the rising 23-year-old.

Neuville was leading the season-closing Cyprus Rally in his Team Peugeot Belgium-Luxembourg 207 Super 2000, when he was forced to stop with alternator failure. He hit back by winning the non-points Cyprus Golden Stage Rally two days later.

“Seeing Thierry develop over the course of the year has been one of the biggest satisfactions of my motorsport career,” said van Dalen, who guided Neuville to victory on the IRC rounds in Corsica and Sanremo. “He has got a good momentum behind him and has gone from strength to strength with an incredible rate of progress. First of all he learned to drive quickly, and then to win. Then he learned to overcome difficulties. He’s come out of it even stronger, consistently increasing his speed but without making any mistakes."