Adrien Fourmaux has retired from third position after a wild moment in wet conditions at Rally Japan that resulted in the Hyundai World Rally Championship driver losing the passenger door from his i20 N.
Fourmaux had led Hyundai’s charge through what has been a difficult rally for the Korean brand, but his fine drive came to an abrupt halt in treacherous wet conditions in stage 15 [Nukata 1, 20.23km].
The Frenchman was caught out by mud on the road towards the end of the stage, which fired his Hyundai down a bank and through some trees before rejoining the road. The excursion ripped the passenger door from the car and caused extensive damage to the right hand side of the i20 N.
Driver and co-driver were unharmed in the incident — but the removal of the passenger door meant that the crew had lost their timecard, which effectively meant their rally was over.
“There was a lot of fog on the windscreen and I couldn’t see much. In a left it was full of mud and we went a bit wide and touched some trees,” said Fourmaux, who managed to reach the stage end with the seventh fastest time.
Hyundai shortly confirmed that damage sustained in the incident was too much for Fourmaux to continue.
“Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria have been forced to retire with damage sustained in an off on Sunday’s first stage causing too much damage to safely continue," read a statement from the Hyundai team.
The incident arrived just moments after Hyundai confirmed Thierry Neuville had to retire before the first stage of the day due to windscreen wiper failure caused by an electrical problem.
Neuville had already suffered a transmission issue on Thursday and broken rear differential on Friday flowed by a broken driveshaft on Saturday in what proved to be a disastrous round for the reigning world champion.
To rub further salt into Hyundai’s wounds, Ott Tanak suffered a front right puncture in the following stage 16, but the Estonian completed stage in fourth.
Ogier narrowly in command
Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier managed to edge further clear of team-mate Elfyn Evans in the extremely slippery wet conditions.
Evans had been 7.5s up on Ogier early in stage 15 but admitted he was distracted by the wreckage on the road from Forumaux’s off, finishing the stage only 0.8s faster than Ogier.
Ogier responded by taking a second out of Evans to win stage 16, which extended his rally lead out to 6.7s with four stages remaining.
Sami Pajari moved up to third overall following Fourmaux’s demise ahead of Tanak, while M-Sport’s Gregoire Munster and Kalle Rovanpera rounded out the top six.
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