Esapekka Lappi has suffered from numerous technical failures. PDO
Esapekka Lapin the dream of a third consecutive podium in the World Rally Championship was dashed on Saturday at the Safari Rally in Kenya.
Hyundai driver Lappi was in a great position when he came to Saturday’s day service, as the Finn competing in the iconic Safari for the first time finished third. But at the special test right after the maintenance, Lappi experienced a huge disappointment.
Lapland’s car started to make a strange bang again, just like in Wednesday’s special test, which the Finn missed completely. Lapland and the map reader Janne Ferm finally turned off the special test onto a side road and parked their Hyundai in the middle of the savannah.
A disappointed Lappi confirmed after arriving at the maintenance area that it was exactly the same problem that he had suffered from on two separate occasions on the test track.
– I pressed the gas to the bottom during acceleration and then I heard a big bang. The phone also took off. After all, it banged on the cardan, now from a slightly different place than in the shakedown. In the test section, it went under braking, but now it went under acceleration, Lappi lamented.
Teammates from Lapland Thierry Neuville and Dani Sordo have not encountered similar adversity during the Midsummer weekend.
– The team probably had similar problems last year, but something has already been done about it. Nothing like this has happened to me before. In itself, this is a new thing, and the most special thing is that it has only been in my car, Lappi was amazed.
– I don’t understand what’s really going on here. Clearly something is wrong when it has already happened three times in a few days.
“Can’t we continue”
Lappi said frankly that he was surprised that the car lasted this long.
– I had thought that we would stop in the second half, but it took us all the way here. Of course, the guys had tried to change the settings in the direction that we would avoid these problems.
– The car may not have been so good to drive, but it went quite well until now. A pity, of course. Quite a lot of work had to be done before this, since I had not been here before. Now everything went down the drain, Lappi was in pain.
The Lapland missed all three special tests on Saturday afternoon, so he was penalized for a total of half an hour. Despite them, the Finn is still in 12th place overall.
Lapland has a chance to get into the points on Sunday if he continues the race.
– We won’t be able to continue if we only have spare parts left, Lappi laughed.
Toyota has a four-way lead in the Safari Rally before the final day of driving. Sebastien Ogier leads the race before Kalle Rovanperää, Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta.