Rhys Yates heading to Portugal for next stage of World Championships

Yates will be racing on the first ever all-gravel WRC event outside the UK at Rally de Portugal.

Despite a great start to 2019, which included fourth place on the world famous Rallye Monte-Carlo, Rhys insisted his feet remained firmly on the floor ahead of his fourth world championship event of the season.

It will again be a new rally for the driver in his ŠKODA Fabia R5. He said: “I’ve spent as much time as possible watching onboard footage from other drivers competing in Portugal from years gone by.

“As well as that, I’ve spoken to as many people as I can who have competed on the event.

“It’s about trying to build up this picture in my mind and you keep adding to that picture, putting as much colour in as you can.

“I’m fortunate in that James [Morgan, co-driver] has done the event three times before and our engineer in the team has done it six times, so I’ve been able to call on some good experience.

“One of the good things about this event is the new roads on the first day — they’re completely new for everybody, so we’ll have a bit more of a level playing field on Friday.”

Yates said the event was all about experience.

He added: “I want progression from the last WRC 2 round in Corsica, but I don’t want to be knocking corners off the car or landing it in a ditch.”