Lappi’s future seat for next season remains uncertain, and there’s a risk he might be left out of the WRC altogether. His rally in Chile started off on the wrong foot as early as Friday when the car’s setup wasn’t right.
Things didn’t improve on Saturday either. In the morning, Lappi’s front bumper came loose, forcing the Finnish driver to take it easy through the stages to avoid causing further damage to the car’s front end. In the afternoon, thick fog and a two-minute time penalty sealed his poor performance.
Before Sunday’s four remaining stages, Lappi sits in eighth place, trailing the leader by over five minutes. Understandably, his goals for Sunday are far from optimistic.
“Tomorrow we should try to play the Super Sunday game like they said. I wish I could but so far the speed has not been even close. So it’s hard to play that game,” Lappi commented.
In contrast, Sami Pajari has had a noticeably more enjoyable time behind the wheel of the Toyota. Although Pajari dropped from fourth to sixth place on Saturday, he has gained valuable experience in challenging conditions. This is only his second rally in a Rally1 car.
“Today the stages were more technical and something new for me to learn driving the Rally1 car. The conditions were also really tricky already in the last stage of the morning and especially this afternoon. In SS11 I was expecting some fog but I was surprised just how bad it was. I decided to just try and drive clever in those conditions, as it would be so easy to make a silly mistake because you can only see a few metres in front,” Pajari told.
“Still we could enjoy some sections today: the first stage of the afternoon was really good and the last one was also going better even in damp conditions. The car has been really nice to drive the whole weekend and I’m sure we can have a good feeling again tomorrow.”
On Sunday, there are still four special stages on the schedule, covering approximately 55 kilometres.
