Following Ott Tänak’s unfortunate accident on the Sardinia Rally, top WRC drivers have accused events of building dangerous artificial jumps, with calls for them to be banned.
Tänak had to retire his Toyota from third place in Sardinia after an incident on what many felt was a badly built jump on the Monte Baranta stage. The Estonian’s Yaris smacked the road nose-first, damaging its cooling system.
Now WRC champion Sébastien Ogier has led calls to make building jumps on stages a uniform matter.
"We all agreed as drivers, it's not clever to build these artificial, short, kicking jumps in the middle of a long straight,” he said. “I have nothing against jumps, I love it and they can make as many jumps as they want, but make them progressive and not the ramp so sharp and short.
"We come in sixth gear and it's stupid. It's bad for the World Rally Car, but I really would not want to do this jump in an R5 car."
M-Sport chief Malcolm Wilson said a crash for Fiesta R5 driver Guarav Gill showed Ogier was right about the dangers of jumps for lesser cars. He added: "Some guidelines for building the jumps would be a good idea. Gaurav destroyed the front of his car on that jump. It's just not very sensible."
The sort of jump teams like, is like those created by Tommi Mäkinen for his corporate hospitality on the Ouninpohja stage in Finland. He said: "You can go really flat over that jump, it looks good and it's easy on the car because we made it without a short ramp.
"There's no point to make something unnatural which is only breaking things. For Ott, the suspension had no chance after this jump – he didn't land on the wheels, he landed on the front bumper!"
