By Paul Evans
Elfyn Evans was unlucky to crash out of Rally Germany yesterday, after drifting wide on a corner and putting his M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC into a field.
The 29-year old Dolgellau driver had been fourth after Friday’s opening full day of competition, but slipped to seventh after being overtaken by Jari-Matti Latvala (Toyota) on SS8, Dani Sordo (Hyundai) on SS9 and Esapekka Lappi (Toyota) on SS10.
Going into SS11, the four drivers were separated by just 12 seconds – but two miles into the 7.6 mile Römerstrasse test, Evans hit some gravel and ran slightly wide going through an innocuous looking right hand corner and understeered into a field.
It was one of those minor moments in which a driver usually points the car back towards the road and continues without much delay. But Evans is having rotten luck in this year’s FIA World Rally Championship, and he wasn’t going to get away with it that easily. Instead, his car hit a concrete block hidden in the grass, damaging the front-left suspension beyond repair.
Evans and co-driver Dan Barritt returned to action this morning under Rally 2 regulations, albeit with significant time penalties that denied them any hope of a top result. Unlike Latvala and Sordo, who both retired, Evans successfully completed the final day’s three tricky stages to come home 25th.
“We had a positive first day and, considering our road position, I think we did a pretty good job,” said Evans.
“But unfortunately Saturday just didn’t go our way at all. We lost a bit of time on the opening stage [SS8], had a spin in the third one [SS10] and then a trip into the field in the fourth [SS11] which ended in retirement.
“It certainly wasn’t the result we came here for, so now we just have to look forward to the next one.”
M-Sport’s Team Principal Malcolm Wilson said: “Elfyn was unlucky this weekend – going off at the same place as Craig [Breen] in an incident which would ordinarily have gone unpunished.
“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Elfyn and he was denied an opportunity to fight for the podium.”