Sebastien Ogier reveals that his Toyota Yaris carried some issues before his impact in Stage 12 of Acropolis Rally and describes what happened during the final stage of Saturday.
The Frenchman was leading Acropolis Rally since Stage 10 when Thierry Neuville retired with a broken suspension, but the first one retired after SS12 as he did not manage to return back to the service park on time. More specifically, he was lucky in Stage 10 as he had the same impact as Neuville had, but his Yaris had no hybrid boost after the regroup zone before the start of SS12. The problems continued for Ogier as he had two rear punctures in Stage 12 resulting in dropping more than four minutes and in losing three places. Despite his driving slowly and his efforts to get to the finish line of SS12, he hit something with the rear-left of his car which made a serious impact to the suspension. Toyota confirmed earlier that he and Vincent Landais will restart tomorrow under the Super Rally regulations, but they will start from ninth place which means that they lost eight places in total.
"It was a challenging start already this morning with some muddy sections in the first stage, and the last one was quite rough", Ogier said.
"Our first loop could have been better but I was happy to get through without big drama.
"Then the whole afternoon was quite eventful.
"In the place where Thierry had his issue, I also had an impact and some damage, but we managed to continue with good pace.
"Then, leaving the regroup before the last stage we lost hybrid.
"After a couple of kilometres we started to have a puncture at the rear, and then a second one.
"I tried to carry on slowly but unfortunately exiting a hairpin I heard a very small bang and the left-rear upright was broken.
"I tried everything I could to fix it and bring the car back, but it was too much".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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