Video: Neuville & Bouffier tarmac test – are there bad sides to their job?

Being a World Rally Championship driver may as well be the best job in the world, but I suppose there could be some drawbacks and bad sides to this here profession as well. However, at the moment I cannot think of any. If they’re not competing, doing what they do best, they’re testing, which again consists of driving some of the best racing cars in the world very fast. Granted, it’s a job which involves high levels of stress, but somehow I think the fun factor outweighs that, at least for a while. It probably helps to be in a competitive car and in a competitive team, because results will make all the stress go away. Of course, being a WRC driver is not all about driving, there are a lot of meetings, discussions and PR work, but all this, put together, still doesn’t ring a “bad, boring, tedious job” bell to me. Maybe after a decade or two?

Anyway, while the rest of the working Europe is mostly not working and is instead spending money at too expensive vacation resorts, WRC drivers are busy preparing for the upcoming events. Tarmac is coming and teams are working hard to prepare for the switch to the sealed surface. Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville and Bryan Bouffier tested the i20 WRC on tarmac recently and while to us this looks like just another test session, with car going up and down the closed piece of road, team undoubtedly learned few new things about the car, which is undergoing constant development. Finding a working setup for different tarmac roads is important, since, like gravel, no two tarmac roads are quite the same.

If you read through all of this, I applaud you. Now stop that and watch the video.