Kalle Rovanperä has labelled his Friday afternoon crash on Rally Finland as “stupid”, as he has no idea why his Toyota Yaris Rally1 snapped and sent him into a roll.
The home hero had been leading before his rally came to an end upside down on SS8, having won five stages in a row and built a gap of 5.7 seconds between himself and team-mate Elfyn Evans.
His crash meant he missed the final two stages of the day, but he was able to get a lift back to service to discuss his dramatic day.
“More or less [I’m OK]. Of course it’s always a bit painful when you have a big shunt like that, but doctor checked me and we are also going to take pictures today, so we make sure that I’m fine,” he said.
“It’s a bit actually, let’s say stupid crash because it doesn’t really feel like we should have crashed there. I don’t have any idea why we over-snapped like this on the corner.
“From the braking I felt that the speed is fine, I felt like that ‘now it’s going to be an OK corner’, but maybe just being the first car, you always jump off the line, especially for the rear tyres usually.
“And yeah, we get some mud or something from the rear, full slide, full lock, I can not straighten the car out, and then from the ditch we hit something really hard. Bed rock or something, which sent us flying.”
So can Rovanperä rejoin the action on Saturday, or will he have his first points-free rally of the year?
“We don’t know yet. When the car comes back from the forest, the guys will check it, and of course fix it. Usually they can fix everything if the body is fine.”
