Monte Carlo Rally and 24 Hours of Daytona kick off the 2020 season

Thierry Neuville steals the glory

Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville stole the thunder from Toyota’s Elfyn Evans on Sunday by winning the four final stages and storming to a convincing win, to kick off the Belgian’s latest bid for a first WRC crown in the best possible fashion.

Neuville had led on Thursday night after winning the first two stages, before dropping behind the Toyota drivers on Friday. But he was always within striking distance of Evans and Ogier, as the trio put on an intense scrap for Monte honours.

Neuville was just 6.4 seconds off Evans’s lead and right on Ogier’s tail on Saturday night, leaving it all to play for on the final leg. How he then dominated the final day to win by 12.6 seconds shows just how determined he is to become champion. In the end, it was Ogier he beat as Evans slipped to third – but a podium and such a strong performance on his first weekend in Toyota colours should leave him convinced that rally wins – and, whisper it, perhaps even a tilt for the title – are well within his reach.

Nine-time WRC king Sébastien Loeb struggled in the wake of the lead trio in his Hyundai. The legend narrowly missed a nasty accident when his i20 was left balanced on the edge of a drop on Sunday morning, before spectators came to his rescue. Then after damaging a tyre, he fell to sixth in the final order as Esapekka Lappi finished fourth in his maiden outing in an M-Sport Fiesta, ahead of Kalle Rovanpera’s Toyota.

It’s always odd to see Loeb playing a bit part in the WRC. But the facts are there are other leading lights eclipsing him now – and with Tänak certain to hit back in Sweden, predictions of another riveting season for the WRC look right on the money.

Evans shines bright on Toyota debut

While the weekend didn’t probably didn’t end quite the way he’d hoped, Britain’s Elfyn Evans should be swelling with pride after a deeply impressive debut for Toyota. The 2017 Wales Rally GB winner was right in the thick of the fight for victory and for a while looked set to win the Monte, which remains the most coveted rally of them all.

Evans hit the front on Friday morning in stunning fashion by winning all three stages, and by the end of the first day found himself only 1.2 seconds down on new team-mate and six-time world champion Sébastien Ogier, as Toyota sat pretty with a convincing one-two.

He then hit the front again on Saturday morning with a strong win on the second stage of the day and headed into the final leg with a convincing lead of 4.9 seconds over Ogier, the six-time world champion making his own debut for Toyota while bidding for his seventh straight Monte win and the eighth of his career.

Tänak escapes huge shunt

The big story at the start of the weekend was a lucky escape for world champion Ott Tänak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja, who somehow emerged unscathed from a major crash in their new Hyundai.

The pair were running in fourth position on Friday morning when their i20 flew off the road at high speed into a ditch and then pitched into a series of violent barrel rolls. Footage of the crash zipped around social media, but if anything the onboard footage looked more alarming as the accident appeared to go on… and on.

How the pair emerged without serious injury is a huge testament to the safety of modern rally cars – but also served as a timely reminder to spectators as well as drivers just how dangerous and raw this code of motorsport remains. Not exactly the ideal start to Tänak’s time at Hyundai, then – but miraculously he’ll be fit and well to fight back on the next round, in Sweden, on February 13^th-16^th.

Cadillac wins fourth straight Daytona 24 Hours

A few hours later over in Florida, Cadillac secured its fourth consecutive victory at the Daytona 24 Hours, as the 2020 sportscar racing season kicked off at record speed.

Wayne Taylor Racing took the win for the third time in four years, with former Sauber Formula 1 ace Kamui Kobayashi taking the flag. The victory also marked a second straight win for the Japanese and Dutchman Renger van der Zande, secured a third Daytona Rolex watch for five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon and a first overall win for Australian Ryan Briscoe to add to his previous GT class honours.

The Cadillac entry finished more than a minute ahead of the pole position-winning Mazda Team Joest entry driven by Briton Oliver Jarvis, Olivier Pla and Tristan Nunez, despite Briscoe earning a 60 second stop and go penalty with five and a half hours left on the clock. That infringement dropped the car to fourth, and with only five caution periods for the whole race, made the crew’s comeback all the more impressive.

The lack of safety car periods also ensured this would be a record Daytona 24 Hours, with a new distance benchmark set of 833 laps.

Britons Hanley and Newey win LMP2

Jarvis might have lost out on the overall victory, but there was glory for British drivers in the LMP2 class as Ben Hanley and Harrison Newey – son of Red Bull F1 design genius Adrian – stormed to victory with team-mates Henrik Hedman and Colin Braun for the DragonSpeed team (run by American 1990s British F3 racer Elton Julian). The quartet won the class by more than a lap.

BMW conquered the GT Le Mans class, with former DTM racer Augusto Farfus part of the winning crew for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s M8 GTE squad. And Lamborghini claimed a GT Daytona class one-two with its Huracan GT3s.

On a weekend when race organiser IMSA also announced an historic accord with Le Mans that could be the first step towards a single rulebook for sportscar racing’s top class in the future – and in the short-term perhaps more American entries in the World Endurance Championship – the first big circuit race of the season completed a bright and positive start for motorsport in 2020.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.