QATAR M_SPORT

Mads Østberg (5th) said: “This morning hasn’t been perfect, but at least we are through. I’ve really been struggling to find the right feeling with the car and I have to drive differently to what I’m used to. It feels like we’re missing power. The handling is good and everything else is working well, so I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the altitude, but it didn’t feel like this in Mexico. The surface is very different here so maybe it’s a combination of things. Either way it doesn’t feel quite right so we’ll have to work on that. “We were fastest on the downhill sections so that is a positive. We’ll try and build on that over the second loop, but it will be really rough as there were already quite a lot of stones on the first pass.” Evgeny Novikov (7th) said: “It was definitely not a bad choice for me to be running first on the road today. We were able to choose our own lines and there weren’t any stones on the stages which meant we could cut where we wanted without taking any big risks. “I’m sure the stages will be a lot rougher this afternoon, we’ll just have to wait and see. There are a lot of kilometres still to run, so we’ll see what happens.”  Thierry Neuville (8th) said: “The stages were quite bumpy and rough so it was not easy. We decided to take a cautious approach to protect the car. This rally will be very hard for the mechanics so we are not taking any big risks at the moment. “We had a small issue with the wipers towards the end of the first stage [SS2], but it didn’t affect me too much and they were working perfectly for the long one [SS3] so that was no drama. It will be tough this afternoon.

“There are already some big stones on the stages so we’ll have to be really careful. There is a long way to go and anything can still happen.”