Adrien Fourmaux has explained his exit from the second day of Rally Sweden.
Fourmaux had been one of five drivers fighting for the lead on the second round of the World Rally Championship.
But the Frenchman dropped back to sixth on the final stage of Saturday morning when he bizarrely began the stage without his helmet fastened. He elected to stop to correct the problem.
Fourmaux then won the first stage in the afternoon but retired a few corners into the next as he got sucked into a snowbank.
“In one corner I went to hit the snowbank but then it grabbed then the front and for like 60 meters after the front was still in the snowbank, snowbank, snowbank,” Fourmaux told DirtFish at the scene of the off.
“At some point it catch more the front and then it was over. We got stuck there. There was no spectators, we try everything we could to move all the snow behind the car, under the car, and to get it out, but no, we didn’t get it after 50 minutes of trying.
“I was just a little bit too late to go in, so then I was in the loose, so then I went wider, but not much, but enough to catch me.”
Fourmaux was frustrated by the strange incident in the morning, so did that distract him at all?
“Hard to say now, but yeah, probably I wanted to do well and try to catch a bit,” he said. “We did a really good first stage, so I wanted to keep the same pace, for sure.”
Fourmaux will restart the rally on Sunday in pursuit of 10 points from both Super Sunday and the powerstage.
“We’re going to try tomorrow anyway. We’ll see if being first on the road will be a help or not. We’ll see. If it’s like Friday, why not? If it’s like today, I would say it’s going to be difficult, but we’re going to try.”
