Esapekka Lappi explains the incident he had in Stage 4, which led him to retire for the rest of Rally Finland, and feels disappointed after the speed he showed this morning.
Rally Finland may be the last event of Lappi at Rally1 category as he agreed his participation in four rallies with Hyundai Motorsport. EP managed to reel in the third Thierry Neuville at the end of Stage 2 in Finland as he was only six tenths of a second behind the Belgian and gained four places at the end of SS2. After Stage 3, Lappi dropped from fourth to fifth overall as Sami Pajari passed Neuville and Lappi on the classification and moved up to third after his setting the fastest time in SS3. The first mistake of Lappi in 2026 came in Stage 4 of Rally Finland as he rolled his i20N Rally1 just 800 meters into SS4. In fact, Lappi lost the rear of his car after a high-speed corner and afterwards his i20N started rolling before ending into a ditch. Unfortunately, EP is not able to restart under the SuperRally regulations on Saturday, as his car had roll cage damage, which means that Hyundai Motorsport relies only on how Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux will perform in Finland in order to secure some valuable points for the championship and to close its gap from the first Toyota.
"During a high-speed section, I braked a bit late, although I thought I was still able to slow the car down", Lappi said.
"I tried to turn in and make a cut on the corner, but that didn’t help, and we ended up with the rear of the car in the ditch on the exit.
"I thought we might have got away with it, but then the skirt lifted and we rolled.
"It’s bad luck that how we landed caused damage to the roll cage, and now we’re not able to restart.
"It’s a shame for it to end this way, especially as we were demonstrating good speed, and we were satisfied with the preparation we did for Finland".
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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