Neuville wins in Portugal

Thierry Neuville was the fastest driver after 23 stages in Portugal. The Belgian driver got his comeback after his retirement in Croatia two rounds ago. Photo: Marco Rimola / Pure WRC

Finally, for Hyundai. In the sixth round of the WRC 2026 Hyundai ended up on top of the podium. Two rounds ago, in Croatia, Neuville had the victory ahead of the last stage, but had to retire the car after an incident. In Portugal, the Belgian driver managed to hold on to his lead at the final stage. Hyundai claimed ahead of Canary Islands that they had upgrades for Portugal, and maybe this is the time their season start to challenge Toyota.
Neuville managed to claim the first spot in the second to last stage, after Ogier had troubles with a wheel change on stage, dropping the frenchman down to sixth place.
Oliver Solberg ended up on second place, 16.3 seconds after Neuville, after he’s had some bad luck on the most recent rallies. The last podium spot was claimed by Elfvyn Evans, and all podium drivers ended up within 30 seconds from each others.

In WRC2, Teemu Suninen and Jan Solans took turns on leading the rally, with recent Canary Islands winner Alejandro Cachon at the lead after two stages on friday. On SS22, Solans dropped over 40 seconds to Suninen, and two positions, giving the Finn a good chance to claim his first victory since 2022.

In the JWRC, three drivers took turns on the lead, Ali Türkkan, Gil Membrado and Calle Carlberg. Carlberg took control of the lead slowly but steady, and after SS21, Carlberg had almost 20 seconds down to Membrado, and over 2,5 minutes down to Türkkan. But a crash for Carlberg and Membrado losing over 17 minutes opened up for Türkkan to win the class.

Written by: Christian Flodin