Trier, Germany: The Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT crew of Kris Meeke — alongside co-driver Paul Nagle — quickly made up for the minor mistake they committed on SS1 to grab third place overall after the morning loop of first day in Rally of Germany. Improving his pace throughout the day, Meeke
went on to finish the leg in second position after the leader went off.
The Northern Irishman faced some dramatic challenges with the tyres on stages 10 and 11 but managed to maintain his overall position by the end of second day.
“It’s promising to be in second position,” Meeke said, adding: “But we know that anything can still happen in the rest of the rally. We’ll be taking a good look at the weather forecast, because we’ll need to make the right tyre choice. The rear of my car was sliding a lot on SS10. My engineer gave me a lot of valuable advice and I took that on board. Later on SS11 on left-handers I could feel something strange! I thought it was a puncture so I had to come down a few gears. The fight on P2 towards the end of the day with Neuville was amazing, I decided to drive at my own pace and apparently it was good enough.”
In WRC3, Abu Dhabi Racing junior driver Mohammad Al Mutawaa and Stephen McAuley made a good start till SS3. Al Mutawaa said: “I’m enjoying Rally Germany especially today under the heavy rain on the last stages of the day. I’m slowly gaining the experience, hopefully by next year I will compete with the top guys in my class.”
