There are few disciplines in which two people have to work together as closely as a rally driver and a co-driver. During a rally stage, the latter acts as the former’s eyes, but the collaboration between them goes way beyond stage recognitions and reading pace notes.
Rally drivers and co-drivers don’t have fancy crews to change their tires or make repairs on the cars when something bad occurs during a stage, they have to do it. Take Hyundai World Rally Team’s Thierry Neuville and his co-driver Nicolas Gilsoul, who had their fair share of bad luck during last week’s WRC event in Spain.
A puncture on their Hyundai i20 WRC robbed them of a second World Rally Championship win this season, as they lost precious seconds to change the tire. They changed it themselves, with no help from spectators (as that is forbidden), in just 1 minute and 45 seconds. Scroll down to watch how they did it.