Challenging for Lappi at Rally Turkey

After a challenging two days on the Turkish roads, searching for better grip, Esapekka had to retire on Saturday afternoon. He was unable to take part in Sunday’s stages after his car was too heavily damaged when he went off the road on Saturday morning.

September 16, 2018

After a challenging two days on the Turkish roads, searching for better grip, Esapekka had to retire on Saturday afternoon. He was unable to take part in Sunday’s stages after his car was too heavily damaged when he went off the road on Saturday morning.

– Friday morning was quite a struggle but we got through it without any issues. We knew that the stages would be rougher on the second pass, so we made the car stiffer in service to protect it more against the rocks. However, this meant that we had less grip and we lost a lot of time on the long stage as a result. Then I made a lot of changes on the road section and we got the grip back. I’m looking forward to tomorrow: Hopefully we can continue like we ended today. Everything can still happen, there are many kilometres to go

– On Saturday we had quite a difficult morning and in the last stage before service, two kilometres from the end of the stage, I think my pace-note was one step too optimistic. I ran a bit wide and then we got stuck on the edge of the road. The car itself was OK, but I couldn’t get it back on the road, and about 20 minutes later it actually slipped down the hill.