In the morning, the car’s setup was way off, but by the afternoon, things had improved slightly. On the fifth stage of the race, Lappi managed to finish in the top four.
Lappi revealed on Friday evening that a major service was done on his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car during the midday service, with the entire gearbox being replaced.
“We changed the transmission because there was some problem. I don´t know what it was but clearly we could see from the data that the front diff was not working like it should. So we changed the gearbox and it was a bit better.”
“I had different setup as well. The car it feels different. Also I did something small as well on the rear diff after the first stage in the afternoon, and then it became quite okay, but just the tyre choice was not. It was a bit risky, but you need to play the game.”
In the afternoon, the pace might have been enough for higher positions, but the finnish driver had to settle for seventh place after Friday. The biggest time loss came right on the opening stage of Friday afternoon, when a puncture cost nearly half a minute. Lappi is 39.1 seconds behind the leader.
“It happened immediately without any warning. It was just pieces flying on the straight line, I don’t know but it didn’t puncture. It punctured later on. I carried a couple of kilometres only with the wires because the air was inside still and I could do this in speed. But then when it punctured, it was not so nice anymore,” Lappi told.
Fortunately for Lappi, the puncture occurred near the end of the stage, so not too much time was lost. On Saturday, Lappi suspects that the day might be more about securing points for the team rather than pushing for higher positions.
“I don’t know what we can do from this road order, but let’s see. At least we have to stay out of the troubles.”
