Rally di Roma Capitale boss Max Rendina has admitted Saturday’s delayed stages could force a change of itinerary for next year’s event.
The European Rally Championship opener was delayed by two hours for Saturday’s loop of repeated stages after Andrea Crugnola and Adrien Fourmaux crashed and blocked special stages one and two respectively. The crews behind them in the running order were held at the start of both stages for an hour each time while the cars were recovered.
“The delay is something that can happen in this sport. The road [where the crashes happened] was very, very technical,” Rendina told DirtFish.
“We can consider to modify the itinerary next year and maybe the most narrow places… we can remove them.”
There was some concern about restarting the stages after a delay of one hour, but Rendina said the three-hour road closing window offered the potential to keep the competition running.
“We had three hours’ time – this was critical timing, so we prefer to continue without canceling any stages,” he said. “We had the possibility to do that. On Saturday, the organizing team and race director all worked really well and we could do this because we know with this three-hour comfort zone we can race and we prefer to race without canceling that stage.”
