Pajari briefly ran wide at one point, causing damage to the rear of his car. Fortunately, the Finnish driver emerged from the situation unscathed.
“We clipped the rear corner of the car on a tree or a bush, but thankfully nothing major happened. The car is still driving straight, so no real drama,” Pajari reported.
This year’s Rally Sardinia has so far delivered an unusually high number of incidents. On Friday, M-Sport Ford lost all three of its cars, and on Saturday, Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux went off the road and into the fields.
“In some ways, this has been more challenging than before. Just recently in Portugal we were talking about how nothing really happened to anyone, but here it seems like something’s going on all the time. I guess everyone is really pushing, especially the top three, so things are bound to happen,” Pajari reflected.
Pajari, by contrast, has focused solely on running his own rally and plans to continue that approach for the afternoon loop. Heading into the midday service, he sits fourth overall, 55.4 seconds behind the rally leader.
“We’ve just been working through our own process. I wasn’t too happy with those first two stages this morning – it just didn’t feel quite as smooth as yesterday. If I can get back into that rhythm, that would be great,” Pajari said.
