Ott Tanak is talking about what forced him to retire in Stage 3 of Rally Finland saying that an impact created a hole to the sump guard of his Puma while he believes that he will not be able to restart on Saturday.
The 2019 WRC Champion was hit with another engine issue, but this time it was caused by hitting something on the road resulting in breaking the sump guard and cracking the starter motor. He immediately switched to EV after 6,1 Km into Stage 5 and pulled off the stage to make an exit via an access road. After this impact, there was a noise followed by some smoke coming from the engine bay which meant that it was game over for him and Martin Jarveoja. The Estonian crew was leading Rally Finland after SS1 while they dropped to third overall at the end of Stage 2, but eventually M-Sport Ford confirmed his retirement from Rally Finland.
"In a very fast place it seems we touched a bedrock or something on the road in a compression and obviously it has broken the sump guard and gone through the sump guard", Tanak said.
"I can see underneath that the starter motor is cracked and is broken and other than that I cannot find anything else but the oil from the engine has gone out and the engine is clearly broken.
"It was not a little fire it was a critical situation to be honest as we were alone in the forest.
"There was fire immediately but we tried to cool it down and were hoping that driving on EV mode it would cool it down as the exhaust was hot and if it is full of oil it could burn down quite quickly.
"We drove as long as EV allowed us to cool it down but when we stopped it was full of fire.
"We were lucky to have two extinguishers there".
Finally, he asnwered when he was asked if there is any hope of repair to allow him to rejoin the rally on Saturday: "It is quite probably a hole in the engine so I think this one event will be finished".
Source: Autosport.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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