Elfyn Evans reveals that an impact with a rock was the real cause behind his problems on Sunday and will try to turn things around for Rally Sardinia after the difficulties he faced during Rally de Portugal.
The Welshman finished in sixth place overall and is now 24 points behind the championship leader as he scored only six points from the Saturday classification. His weekend was very difficult as he suffered from a puncture in Stage 7 and had a spin in Stage 11 while his co-driver, Scott Martin, forgot the pacenotes at the stop control of Stage 6 resulting in reading them via his mobile phone for three stages until the end of Friday evening. In general, he was struggling to feel confident with his Yaris and changed the set-up many times during last weekend, but the most serious problem came on the penultimate stage of the rally when he hit a rock resulting in having to switch to EV mode in order to complete Stage 21. The radiator of his car was damaged and the engine was overheated, but somehow, he and Scott Martin managed to head to the regroup zone and to work on their car before the start of Powerstage where they score zero points. Rally Italia Sardegna is about to start in 25 days with the Shakedown where Evans will start second on the road as he holds his second place on the championship.
"Last morning things were going a bit better than two days ago, but in the third stage we had a rock impact on the underside of the car that damaged the radiator", Evans said.
"After that we had to get the car through in EV mode, and we managed to make a repair to get to the finish but unfortunately we didn’t get any extra points from the day.
"We definitely found a better feeling in the car but there are still a couple of areas to work on.
"At least we have some answers from the weekend.
"We’ll try to turn things around and have a stronger rally in Sardinia".
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