Hyundai i20 N Rally2 A lot more difficult than expected. I think the snow tyre was not a bad choice, we just need to stay on the road and continue like this. Not sure why we keep losing them. Noisy stage for sure, lots of mud and lots of cut but it is the same for everybody I am sure. Last year I lost 10sec, this year six. It is good for sure. Was really tricky, but I released the throttle in the last part. Quite tricky, wasn't dry in a lot of places. Other than that the car is okay and I made sure I warmed the tyres properly before this one, it was all okay.
It is more daunting than anything I have ever done before, especially in the night and these conditions. But hey, it's some experience. Mamma Mia. A lot of mud on the last section, much worse than I was expecting.
I don't know how the grip was with the tyres on the muddy sections so starting to be careful. To be quicker than Kalle? Maybe we are both bad. We need to be cautious. This was a mixed stage, wasn't expecting it. The black ice is coming out a bit, not much, but just enough to keep you out of line. Bit of understeer in third gear, which is not nice for the confidence. Keep the car a bit low and try to get the grip but a really tough stage.
It is hard to say what is going wrong to be honest. Driving on the slippery part is hard. The speed at the beginning is massive. Really tricky at the end with the mud, et cetera. The ice was coming in some places. This is a proper Monte Carlo stage. A little bit too cautious, especially in the end, it is hard to be as committed as the beginning and being fast.
Not the perfect stage, but good time. We tried our best but it is tricky. Difficult to read the grip, felt like there was a layer of mud or dirt in places. I had a few slides in places, I was expecting the same level of grip everywhere. In some places there was ice forming, we had to slow down. Also from the smoke from fireworks we have seen nothing sometimes.
