Esapekka Lappi explains the crash he had in Stage 5 of Rally Finland saying that his accident was caused by his pacenotes.
The Finn driver was in fourth overall at the end of Stage 4 and was chasing his teammate Thierry Neuville for the third place until Stage 5 where he went off the road 3,5 Km into SS5. The incident happened when he lost the rear of his i20N on a corner resulting in hitting a tree with the rear side and afterwards with the front of his car. His i20N was very heavily damaged to the front and the bonnet was out while the engine may be damaged as well. So far, it is uncertain if Lappi and Janne Ferm will restart on Saturday under the Super Rally regulations, but the most positive thing is that both of them are unhurt.
"To be honest I don’t know where, but somewhere in the car", Lappi said.
"First thing I said to Janne when we stopped, and I saw that he’s moving, I said ‘OK, we’re alive’.
"So it was quite scary, when I realized that we are going straight to the trees, and my side first.
"It was not a nice moment.
"We went into the trees, but it’s just fully a pacenote mistake.
"I had too optimistic a pacenote for the right-hand corner, which we managed to do half of the corner but we went completely out straight.
"I mean OK, yeah on the left the rear was hanging a bit, but still even the pacenote would have been correct on the right, still we would not make it.
"So yeah, too fast and wrong information from my idea when we did the recce.
"So… a mistake.
"I really guess it’s game over.
"I mean the chassis is for sure pretty fine, but I guess the engine is quite bad as we went straight front-first to the trees.
"The rear also touched the trees, but it’s only fabric, or carbon, so this is easy to fix.
"I mean all the sides are fine, the doors are untouched, so it’s just the front.
"But I guess there is something broken on the engine or the gearbox.
"I don’t know, to be honest, but there is a lot of stuff next to the car not attached.
"So I don’t believe we will continue".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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