Thierry Neuville claimed his first Monte Carlo Rally win on Sunday, the Belgian Hyundai driver denying Sebastien Ogier an eighth success in the season’s traditional curtain-raiser.
Neuville, 31, rattled off the fastest times in all of the final day’s four stages to beat six-time former world champion Ogier by over 12 seconds.
Ogier’s fellow Toyota driver Elfyn Evans was in third.
This was a debut Monte Carlo triumph for Neuville, the 2019 championship runner-up, at his ninth attempt.
And it proved a sweet ending for Hyundai to a rally that had begun so disastrously with their new driver Ott Tanak’s spectacular crash on Friday.
World champion Tanak and his co-driver walked away unscathed from that accident and are now focused on the next leg of the world rally championship in Sweden starting on February 13.
