SS16: Neuville claims stage win

Citroen Junior World Rally Team driver Thierry Neuville has claimed his first stage victory on Brother Rally New Zealand.

Heavy rain was the order of the day, and conditions worsened the further down the running order. Neuville’s stage win now sees the sixth-placed Belgian extend his lead over MINI’s Dani Sordo by 21.2s.

“That was very muddy in some places,” explained Neuville, who opted to use a mix of two hard and two soft compound Michelin tyres on his Citroen DS3 WRC. “It doesn’t help when there is a seven minute delay on the stage as it mad the first section difficult with the tyres. But it went surprisingly well, there were a couple of slippery places but it was okay.”

M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tanak was second quickest through stage 16, 0.6s behind pace-setter Neuville.

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala was the fastest of the factory drivers and completed 1.4s faster than his Ford Fiesta RS WRC team-mate Petter Solberg. Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb was fifth fastest with a time of 4m16.5s. At the end of SS16, Loeb has extended his lead over his Citroen team-mate Mikko Hirvonen at the top of the overall leaderboard to 10.5s.

In the Super 2000 World Rally Championship, Hayden Paddon reported he has no rear suspension on his Skoda Fabia S2000.