The second pass of the Selvino stage has been canceled on Saturday afternoon after both Gus Greensmith and Ole Christian Veiby crashed out at the same spot in the snowy conditions.
Greensmith was the first car into the stage and he appeared to just misjudge the grip levels through a narrow section. The Briton lost control of his Fiesta and smashed into the Armco barrier; the car coming to rest on its side off the rally route.
Toyota junior Takamoto Katsuta – still recovering from his miserable run on Thursday’s opening stage – was the next car on the scene but got through it unscathed, and recorded a time of 19m03.6s.
2C Competition’s Veiby – making his maiden Rally1 start this weekend – was then next on the stage, and made a mistake at exactly the same corner in exactly the same fashion as Greensmith. His Hyundai blocked the road and caused the stage interruption, which eventually resulted in the organizer canceling the stage.
The start of SS11 was also delayed by 10 minutes until 1448 local time.
Kalle Rovanperä, Ott Tänak – who was losing time with an unconfirmed issue of his own – Elfyn Evans, Sébastien Ogier and Esapekka Lappi had all started the stage.
Greensmith, Veiby and their co-drivers Elliott Edmondson and Jonas Andersson are all out of their cars and OK.
Ogier continues to lead Monza Rally ahead of Dani Sordo by 6.7s, with his team-mate and World Rally Championship title rival Elfyn Evans 7.5s behind the lead in third place.
Greensmith and Veiby’s exits have no effect on the top 10 leaderboard as Greensmith was outside the top 40 following an accident on Friday and Veiby was 18th after losing three minutes with an overshoot and trip into the field earlier in the morning.
The afternoon loop will conclude with second passes through Gerosa and Costa Valle Imagna, before the field heads to the Italian Grand Prix venue for the second showpiece grand prix stage of the weekend.
Weather alert from SS12.
It’s snowing hard and accumulating fast! @voiceofrally is stageside with the latest pic.twitter.com/eHU7o6GeUU— dirtfishrally (@DirtFishRally) December 5, 2020
