Thierry Neuville and co-driver Nicolas Gilsoul won the season-opener at Rallye Monte-Carlo after a fierce fight with the two Toyota Gazoo Racing team drivers Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans.
Neuville is now hoping to score a hat-trick of WRC victories adding to the recent win along with the win at the final event of last year in Spain after the Australian round was cancelled due to the bushfires.
The Belgian won Rally Sweden in 2018 and also stood on the podium there twice before, and is now hoping the snow will arrive for the weekend as the teams will be running on full stud tyres.
“An ideal Rally Sweden would have lots of snow, huge snowbanks, very icy roads, the perfect conditions for us to go fast with full confidence to get the most out of the car.” Neuville said.
“When the road is properly frozen, the studs get good grip and you can go flat out. Obviously, if there will be less snow than previous years it could be quite tough to do the stages. Our tyres are very thin and very high, so they won’t work the same on gravel stages and it’s going to be really tricky.“
“Without the snowbanks, the rally gets faster and faster, and less interesting, so we keep our fingers crossed for a lot of snow to arrive.” Neuville added.
