The 14th special stage of Rally Latvia was interrupted after a bizarre incident where an inflatable arch, which Elfyn Evans had earlier clipped, then obstructed Ott Tänak and became entangled with his Hyundai i20 N Rally1.
Toyota driver Evans suffered a huge slide towards the end of SS14, where he lost the rear and wiped out some advertising banners before collecting the slide – narrowly avoiding taking out an inflatable arch.
“Bit of a silly mistake really, trying not to be too aggressive learning the car but caught out,” Evans said.
“[They’re] very, very hard conditions.”
But it turned out Evans weakened the inflatable arch, taking out two of its supporting cables. By the time Tänak arrived at the corner the inflatable arch was lying on the road and Tänak had no option but to collect it.
TV cameras picked up Tänak and co-driver Martin Järveoja out of the car removing the arch from their windshield, with his car already on hydraulic jacks to lift it up to reach the deflated stage furniture.
The stage was red-flagged for Adrien Fourmaux and Takamoto Katsuta, before an irate Tänak arrived at stage-end to explain what had happened.
Tänak was given a notional second-fastest time based on his splits before the incident, so the gap to Sesks in third has been reduced to 6.8s
“I think this describes exactly how safe hands we are in terms of race control,” he said.
“Probably they were having a nice meal and good wine when from the camera you could see that road is blocked and car is coming. Well done race control you are really taking care of us – good boys.
“We are OK but f****** hell, in front of camera and you could see that it’s blocked and you can see it’s running. Hopefully it was a good wine.”
The clerk of the course awarded the red-flagged trio notional times; Tänak had been set to clock the second-fastest time before the arch incident, so his notional time has cut the gap to Mārtiņš Sesks ahead of him to 6.8s.
It’s the second time in as many rallies that Tänak has collided with an unexpected object – he retired on Rally Poland’s second stage last month after a deer jumped out in front of his i20.
DirtFish has contacted the event for a response.
Grégoire Munster was also lucky to escape with just cosmetic damage after sending it too hard over a jump over a crest on the previous test – running wide and heading into the field before rejoining the stage.
The incident damaged the splitter of his Ford Puma Rally1, but strangely Munster was actually content because he felt his speed was stronger than the morning.
“On a jump I went a bit too much on the outside,” he explained, “but the pace is already a bit better so we take that.”
