Tänak hits collapsed foot in bizarre incident – ​​DirtFish

The 14th special stage of the Rally Latvia was interrupted after a bizarre incident in which an inflatable arch, which Elfyn Evans had previously brushed against, impeded Ott Tänak and became entangled with his Hyundai i20 N Rally1.

Toyota driver Evans suffered a serious spin towards the end of SS14, losing the rear of his car and taking several advertising banners with him before regaining control of the spin – and narrowly avoiding dragging an inflatable arch with him.

“It was actually a pretty stupid mistake. I didn’t want to get to know the car too aggressively, but it caught me,” said Evans.

“(These are) very, very tough conditions.”

However, it turned out that Evans had weakened the inflatable arch by ripping out two of its support cables. When Tänak arrived at the corner, the inflatable arch was lying on the road and Tänak had no choice but to collect it.

Television cameras caught Tänak and his co-driver Martin Järveoja getting out of the car as they built the arch out of their windscreen. His car was already on hydraulic jacks so that he could raise it and access the unfolded stage furniture.

The stage was red-flagged for Adrien Fourmaux and Takamoto Katsuta before an angry Tänak arrived at the end of the stage to explain what had happened.

“I think this shows exactly how confident we are in terms of race management,” he said.

“They were probably just eating well and drinking good wine when you could see from the camera that the road was closed and a car was coming. Well done race organizers, you really look after us – good guys.”

“We’re fine, but damn it, you could see on camera that it’s clogged and that it’s running. Hopefully it was a good wine.”

Grégoire Munster was also lucky to escape with only cosmetic damage after going too fast over a jump on the crest of a hill on the previous stage. He went wide and fell into the field before rejoining the stage.

The incident left the splitter of his Ford Puma Rally1 damaged, but strangely Munster was actually satisfied as he felt he was faster than he had been in the morning.

“I went a little too far to the outside on one jump,” he explained, “but the pace is a little better, so we’ll take that.”