Lappi has now returned from over a three-month driving hiatus. During the Lietuva Rally, held on Friday and Saturday, the Finnish driver shook off the rust and fine-tuned the settings of the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car ahead of next week’s Rally Latvia.
Lappi was the fastest on every special stage of the rally. However, the most important thing for the driver was that he could test the car in competitive conditions.
The weather varied between Friday and Saturday, presenting Lappi with his own set of challenges.
“Yesterday we had dry conditions, and today we’ve got some rain. Especially the first pass was fairly difficult in the morning. It was a lot of grip changes, really muddy places,” Lappi told RallyJournal.com.
“So, it’s a good practice for different kinds of conditions, even though it looks like from the forecast that next week it’s going to be dry. But it can change – you never know,” Lappi remarked.
Lappi didn’t need to compare his times to local drivers, but on the other hand, even when testing, one must try to extract everything possible from the car. According to Lappi, this was not entirely possible during the weekend in Lithuania.
“On the other hand, I should do 100% to be able to understand what the car does in these situations. But then, on the other hand, it’s my event car for next week. It’s not our test car, so I can’t really do that,” Lappi explained.
“So it’s a bit of balancing. In some corners, I’ve done like I should, but most of the time I’m too slow. But that’s the name of the game.”
Hyundai lost one test car last week when Ott Tänak crashed the car heavily during a test rally in Estonia.
The Latvian WRC rally will be held from the 18th to the 21st of July.
