World Rally Championship drivers have voiced their confusion and concern about a speed bump appearing on the partway through SS4 of Rally México, which wasn’t there on the pre-event recce.
Midway through the Ortega test, drivers came across a severe bump in the road which caused several cars to kick up in the air.
The bump wasn’t visible until drivers came across it, and none of them had documented in their pacenotes or saw it on recce, leading to the belief that somebody constructed it before the start of the stage.
It was significant enough to cause Thierry Neuville some discomfort inside the car and for him to lose his hybrid power as a result of the impact.
Speaking at the midday service on Friday, Hyundai’s Dani Sordo was the most vocal about the situation.
“I was a little bit confused. I arrived there flat out,” he explained to DirtFish.
“I think it was not in the recce. Always we have some bad people there.
“Mexico there is a lot of really nice fans, but you get one bad. And it’s really bad because when you are sixth gear, flat out, we have the box like this was, but I was thinking are we a little bit more far and we take it like ‘bam’!
“So we were lucky.”
Kalle Rovanperä wasn’t so lucky though, as the severity of the impact has left him with back pain.
“Yeah there was a huge speed bump basically made from gravel which was not there on the recce, and it was on a fast straight in a shadow, you cannot see it.
“I think it caught everybody by surprise – at least the cars in front before the others could know it but yeah.
“I have a small back pain for sure, we went through it quite hard, big impact, but should be fine.”
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans added that he felt it should have been discovered by the officials before the stage started.
“Yeah, pretty big surprise when it kicks like that,” he said.
“Never ideal obviously. So you’d have liked to think it would have been picked up by someone beforehand.”
