Q & A with Guy Wilks

Guy Wilks: I took the oxygen three times last week and will do the same again this week. Essentially, you go into a room and take pure oxygen through a mask for an hour at a time. I'm feeling the effects of it already, but I think I'll really feel the effects once I've had this week's treatment. I go to a place which is for multiple sclerosis sufferers and I have to say, it's a bit of an eye-opener going in there. You really get things into perspective when you see some of the poorly people - and children - that I have seen. It makes me realise that, actually, I've just got a bad back and I'm going to get better from this. It's a genuine reality check.

Q. Are you still in pain?

GW: The pain which I was feeling last week has settled down quite a lot now. It's about me being careful than anything else. I'm doing all I can to speed the process up.

Q. What does the doctor think of your back?

GW: The doctor who looked at my back here said, if you see what I mean, I couldn't have broken my back in a better place. I have fractured two vertebrae furthest away from the spinal chord. The fractures are nowhere near the neck and they're not so serious. I've been fairly fortunate.

Q. What else can you do, exercise-wise?

GW: I'm doing some swimming and things like that now. It's good exercise, it's much better than just lying down waiting for it to heal. Beyond that, there's not too much, I have to be very careful and let the bones heal. I have had the back brace off sometimes. Basically, everything is moving in the right direction. I'll have another x-ray in a week or so to see how things are progressing, but right now everything is good.

Q. What did he say about you competing again?

GW: He said if we wanted to, we could risk Ypres, but he added that it wouldn't make any sense. I want to be 100 per cent fit again before I get back in the car. He said I will be back competing again much sooner than if I was playing rugby or football. Like he said, they can strap me into a rally car and get me comfortable - I'm not going to get my body into the kind of positions I would if I was playing rugby or some other contact sport.

Q. Is the Rally Azores a sensible option?

GW: I think so, yes. I need a goal to aim at, something to strive for through the recovery. In my own mind, I knew that wasn't going to be Ypres and the Azores is the next event after that. I will be working towards the Azores, but it wouldn't say it will definitely be that event where I'm back. I really want to be back, but, like I said, I want to be 100 per cent.

Q. It would be good to come back on gravel?

GW: You could say that, but really I'm comfortable on both surfaces. Look at Gran Canaria, we didn't have the best of rallies and we were still third and just 30 seconds off the win. The Azores is a good bet, it's five weeks away and it gives me something to work at.

Q. You haven't broken any bones competing before, do you think this will affect you when you get back in the car?

GW: No, I don't think so. I was talking in the hospital, just after the crash and saying that I wanted to get straight back in - and I do. I haven't looked at the in-car footage, but that's because there wasn't any, there was something not working. I haven't avoided the coverage on purpose or anything like that. I've seen some of the footage from outside of the car and, it's like I thought, we were going well.

Having watched the in-car of other drivers going through the corner where we crashed, I wouldn't say that our pace note was too far wrong. Maybe we were a little late turning in or something, it's very hard to say. This accident certainly hasn't made me a nervous wreck or anything like that. I made a mistake with the pace note, I've done it before and we've slid a bit wide - these things can and will happen when you tread the fine line that we tread.

Q. Do you think it will take you long to get back up top speed with the car?

GW: No. I'd say a few kilometres and we'll be back there again.

Q. What do you think about the championship - it still doesn't look bad, does it?

GW: No. I think we're fortunate that we're still third. Juho [Hanninen] drove an excellent rally in Sardinia. But even he would admit that he was surprised how close it was at the front after everybody made their mistakes on the opening day. There are a few of us who missed a trick on that event - we missed the opportunity to score some good points. We have made a good set with the car and with the set-up on gravel.

We knew that Juho had the edge in terms of pace on the gravel, but we also knew that after those changes we'd made, it was going to be a great fight and a great chance. Prior to that, we'd never really got what we wanted out of the car, but in Italy, the car was really coming to us. We've worked hard with the engineers and we need to continue to do that. We need to start winning some rallies. We haven't threatened in the way I would have liked to so far this year and we need to step that up. But, we need to do that logically, with our heads.