Esapekka Lappi will take no further part in Rally Finland because his rollcage was damaged in his SS4 accident.
The Hyundai driver had put a lot of effort into his home round of the World Rally Championship, doing more laptop work than ever before in preparation after a disappointing Rally Estonia.
After three stages, he was lying fifth overall – just 5.9 seconds off Sébastien Ogier’s leading Toyota.
However Lappi and co-driver Enni Mälkönen’s event ended just 800 meters onto SS4 Sydänmaa when they rolled off the road.
Lappi told DirtFish: “It’s a very fast braking into a fast left over crest, and there’s a short right before that. So I just anticipated wrong the grip level. And then I need to take from the short right, I need to take the line already into the left inside to try to save it.
“Then I had the wrong line over the crest and then we went wide, and I thought we’re going to survive as, you know, we just dropped to a ditch and I thought as we didn’t hit anything, we thought, ‘OK, we’re going to survive’.
“But then it flipped over, the skirt touched the edge of the road and flipped us over.”
Rollcage damage spells the end of Lappi's Rally Finland
Assessing the damage, Lappi confirmed the rollcage was compromised.
“Yeah, the cage is damaged, so it’s for sure game over,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m sure it’s possible to fix. One tire is just off. The rest should be fine. But the cage is damaged.”
While unable to see too many positives at this point, Lappi’s speed had dramatically improved compared to Estonia.
“Yeah, it was really good,” he added. “Really nice reward for the things what I did and what we did last week in terms of the preparation and analyzing and everything combined.
“So it was nice to see, even though it felt fine, you know, but it was not still like 100% clean. So I was surprised about the times, but for sure this was a nice motivation boost that OK, we still got it.
“But for sure, I would have loved to do much more than two stages.”
With Hyundai’s plans for its third car not yet clear for the remaining rounds of the championship, there’s the possibility this was the last event in the top class for Lappi.
Asked if he was going to either of the South American rounds in Paraguay and Chile, Lappi replied: “I think this we need to discuss later on.”
