Esapekka Lappi faced an unusual problem when Rally Estonia became a late addition to the World Rally Championship calendar this year, thanks to co-driver Janne Ferm.
M-Sport’s new recruit for 2020 has previously competed on Rally Estonia, so had a set of pacenotes already stashed for future editions of the event, which was originally set to continue in 2020 as a WRC Promotional Event.
When the rally was canceled due to a funding dispute in February, Ferm thought they would no longer be needed and disposed of them.
“We had some issue with [the pacenotes] because when there was an official announcement that this rally will not happen at all, as a national rally or whatever it was, Janne threw my pace notes to the trash bin,” explained Lappi.
“Then it happened that this rally will be, so then we had a slight issue. But we found onboards, so he could write them back from the onboard.”
Despite the pacenote debacle, Lappi looked quick on his first runs on the stages as he went third fastest on Friday morning’s shakedown.
His M-Sport team-mate Teemu Suninen did not have the same problem, his notes having avoided the trash can.
Suninen’s past experience on this event was in a Fiesta R5 rather than a WRC car, but he explained his notes would still be fairly similar despite the change in car speed.
“I’m still using road notes, so as long as the road stays similar, the notes are the same,” he said.
“It’s just a different speed but I can read with the WRC car, but there wasn’t big changes with the pace notes.
“Of course, sometimes some corners might be a bit opening, like more opens when they are refixing the roads, but still the notes are pretty much the same in both classes.”
