Ott Tanak explains the reason behind his late departure from the midday tyre fitting zone on Friday saying that his mechanics were forced to open the dirty water pump to clean it for the remaining stages.
The Estonian driver was in fourth place overall at the end of Stage 3, but he dropped outside the top ten before the start of SS4 as he left from the tyre fitting zone with a 22-minute delay and received a three-minute and a 40-second time penalty for his lateness due to the fact that the water pump of his Puma could not restart. All started when he and Martin Jarveoja were working on their car and were cleaning it, but afterwards the engine was overheated when they had to leave from the tyre fitting zone and to head to Stage 4. M-Sport Ford mechanics decided to open the water pump and to clean it which meant that the crew delayed to move into SS4. Last but not least, Pierre-Louis Loubet faced a similar issue with Tanak in parc ferme, but the first one was very unlucky as he was not able even to start in Stage 2 while the team confirmed his retirement for the rest of the weekend.
"Basically going into the tire fitting zone we were just working on the car, cleaning the mud and going in I started the engine but the water pump didn’t start", Tanak said.
"So we were overheating the engine immediately by idling there.
"In the tire fitting zone we tried to kick it a bit to somehow try to get it going again but that was not happening, and basically in the end there was a decision to just strip it down and open the water pump.
"This is already a big job, so we managed to open it, clean it and get it running again and now it’s in some kind of safety mode that it’s just running all the time.
"So like this we could get through the day but was a big job".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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