Hyundai Motorsport has been fined €5000 after Ott Tänak’s i20 N Rally1 was clocked doing 172km/h [106mph] in a 100km/h [62mph] zone on the lead up to Secto Rally Finland.
Hyundai’s lead engineer Jan De Jong and team representative Tolga Ozakinci were called to meet the stewards on Thursday afternoon, after the safety tracking device recorded the speeding offense late on Wednesday afternoon.
De Jong explained that the team faced some issues with their wipers on the previous World Rally Championship round in Latvia, and the drivers “had some safety concerns on driving the high speed stages of Secto Rally Finland with malfunctioning wipers”.
A mechanic was therefore sent out on Wednesday, when it was raining, to try the function of the wipers. De Jong claimed that “by doing so he was obviously more focused on the function of the wipers than on the allowed speed”.
Both De Jong and Ozakinci apologized for the incident. Hyundai has 48 hours to pay the fine, while there is zero penalty for Tänak or co-driver Martin Järveoja.
