M-Sport team principal Richard Millener hailed the “incredible” work from the team’s mechanics to successfully repair Mãrtiņš Sesks’ Ford Puma Rally1 for Sunday’s leg of Rally Finland.
Sesks crashed at high speed on the final stage of Saturday morning, significantly damaging his car to the point Millener admitted the team wasn’t hopeful of repairing it.
However the Latvian managed to drive the car out of the stage, raising hope that actually the car could be turned around in the four-hour window the regulations permit.
Millener told DirtFish: “Initially the plan wasn’t to repair it, to be honest. I thought it would have a lot more damage than it did. But when we found out they actually drove it out of the stage and it was all fine, then we had another look when it got back here and the rollcage was fine.
“So it was mainly just body work, so the guys had a good go at it and had the four hours. The biggest issue was there’s carbon up to a point., then there’s metal over the drivers and it damaged that which took a bit more repairing than we’ve done previously.
“When we did like Grég [Munster]’s last year [sic 2024], that was fine so it was a bit more work than we’ve done before. But no the guys did a good job and I’m happy to say the car’s back in parc fermé.
“You might have to close your eyes a little bit, it’s maybe not quite as straight as it used to be! But they did a really fantastic effort on it.”
Sesks was eager to restart on Sunday if possible, but didn’t pressure the team to fix his car.
“Of course he wanted us to do it, but he wasn’t pushing,” Millener said.
“I think when drivers make a mistake like that they know it’s a sensitive one to ask about and there isn’t really anything to fight for tomorrow – and I don’t want him to fight at a level where he’s trying to get powerstage points or Sunday points because we certainly don’t want another incident with only the two stages left.
Sesks will restart second on the road on Sunday, behind team-mate Jon Armstrong
“But actually we’re also using that car for a couple of events for him in Latvia after this, some PR stuff as well, so there were multiple reasons to see if we could get it fixed. So that would be a nice story for people to go to see that car. It’s the genuine car from here that obviously got repaired.
“But no it’s always nice to get the guy’s mileage if we can, but certainly a little bit more complicated than we’d hoped.”
No World Rally Championship team plans to pull off big repair jobs like M-Sport did on Saturday, but they need to have the capability in case an accident does happen.
“They’re incredible at the end of the day – four hours isn’t that long but they did a great job,” Millener praised.
“They got it finished with 20 minutes to go or something. So yeah I don’t think they’d like to do it too much, but when they need to do it they can definitely do it, so really well done to them. We even had time to take a team photo!”
