Craig Breen has explained the incident that put him out of Rally Sweden on just the second special stage – admitting he got distracted by the windshield washer jet obscuring his vision.
Breen extended his run of consecutive World Rally Championship podiums to four on his M-Sport debut last month on the Monte Carlo Rally and had been lying a cautious seventh after the first stage on round two.
But it quickly unraveled for him on the second stage as he ran wide, nudged a snowbank and suffered a half-spin. That moment kick-started a sequence of events that ultimately led to his retirement from Friday.
“Yeah just a bit of a disaster really,” Breen told DirtFish.
“On the second one, quite close to the start I touched a snowbank with the rear and we got wedged in between the two snowbanks. [I] managed to get out of that but unfortunately for some reason every time I braked after that the windscreen washer was spraying water constantly on the screen all the time, to the point it started to freeze.
“And later on in the stage, just down a fast section downhill over a couple of bumps [I] just got a little bit caught out not being able to see properly and just put off by everything and yeah, got properly stuck in a snowbank. Disaster.”
Washer fluid sprayed directly in front of Breen's line of sight that subsequently froze on the windshield
Breen’s off-road excursion briefly brought a red flag out but both he, co-driver Paul Nagle and the Ford Puma Rally1 were ultimately fine – the vehicle was just left in a tricky place.
Asked if he was perhaps a bit rattled and putting himself under too much pressure before the off, Breen responded: “No honestly the first one [stage] was clean, I had no mistakes, I was happy with everything.
“I didn’t want to do anything massive on the first stage, we took it easy in the first couple of kilometers and the second half of the stage the pace was really good so I was just looking forward to settling into the second one again.
“And honestly, the start of that stage felt really good as well so just one of those things.”
Breen’s Puma returned to service with just cosmetic damage, but team principal Richard Millener was aware a potential strong result had gone begging.
Speaking before Breen and the Puma returned to service in Umeå, Millener said: “After Monte Carlo [which M-Sport won] there’s a bit of a merry-go-round of emotions there, such the highs of the first rally and yeah what’s happened to Craig there is possibly the worst thing that could have happened to him.
“But you know there’s not much we can really do. He texted me afterwards to say he’s really sorry, no excuses but I just said yeah it’s frustrating; it’s not what we wanted after such a strong start.
“He knew that we wanted a strong position here but we’ve just got to regroup, move on and come back and see what we can do tomorrow, see if we can get some fastest stage times and things.
“But yeah, it’s going to be difficult now after those little mistakes.”
Breen was similarly dejected, “disappointed for the guys and girls, they’re putting in so much effort” but he will restart the rally on Saturday.
After missing most of Friday’s stages, Breen’s only realistic chance of scoring points in Sweden rest on Sunday’s powerstage.
“Yeah, it’s the only way I’m going to get points out of this weekend now,” he said, “so we’ll focus our attention for the rest of the weekend on that.”
