Kimi Raikkonen‘s WRC debut came to an sudden end on the final stage of day 3 as he crashed out of the rally.
The Finn was 3km in to the final stage when he entered a left-hand corner in the wrong position: “I knew that place but I came in with too wide a line,” he said, “I thought we were going to go wide but then, unfortunately, there were a lot of rocks and when I hit them the car went over.”
He narrowly missed the car of Mads Ostberg, who had gone off on the same corner a few minutes before.
Check out the video below of the crash:
Earlier in the day he had experienced trouble with compression on one of the engines cylinders and a broken shock absorber.
“I thought we wouldn't finish the rally because we had too many problems with the engine! But it was good fun and nobody got hurt. It happens – it’s part of rallying,” he added.
Raikkonen’s co-driver Kaj Lindstrom told wrc.com he was proud of what Kimi had achieved. “He proved he has the speed, which before the rally nobody knew for sure,” he said. “Getting to the finish of the rally was the main thing here, but with the engine in such a bad shape we knew, realistically, that wasn’t going to happen.”
“Kimi wasn’t overdriving to compensate for the engine, it was all down to being on the wrong line on a very tricky corner – the same one which caught out Mads Ostberg.”
Asked if he would be doing any more rallies with Raikkonen he confirmed there was a possibility but refused to say where and when.
